- Title
- Tehran Azadi Stadium- National Championship of Iranian Body Builders
- Date Made
- 2006
- Medium
- Print on metallic photography paper
- Dimensions
- 27 9/16 × 39 3/8 in. (70 × 100 cm)
Sheet: 29 3/4 × 43 in. (75.57 × 109.22 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2015.97.1
- Collecting Area
- Art of the Middle East: Contemporary
- Curatorial Notes
This pair (see M.2015.97.2) of seemingly homoerotic images is part of a larger group documenting a government-sponsored national bodybuilding championship in Tehran. In one, the photographer Abbas Kowsari has deliberately captured and frozen in time an onstage kiss between two contestants, perhaps a congratulatory gesture but eroticized by their shiny, rippling, nearly nude bodies pulled close together by their handshake. The other photograph shows a heavily spray-tanned contestant striking an offstage pose for the camera, while through windows behind him young men peer in, one of them filming with his mobile phone. The frenzy of the voyeurs contrasts with the still concentration of the bodybuilder, who, despite his well-muscled physique, appears naked and vulnerable to their visual onslaught.
Kowsari has worked as a photojournalist and photo editor for a number of leading Iranian newspapers, most of them, as he has pointed out, now banned. As a documentarian of everyday life in Iran, he captures imagery not commonly seen in the Western media, while his press credentials have provided him with rare opportunities as a fine art photographer. Along with Newsha Tavakolian (whose work is on view here), he belongs to a new generation of artists who use and manipulate photography to create a subtle commentary on contemporary Iranian society.
