This installation highlights the work of local and award winning photographer Shelley Gazin and is featured in the "Light and Shadows: The Story of Iranian Jews" exhibit at the Fowler Museum.
"Becoming Persian: Photographs & Text Threads Illuminating the Iranian-Jewish Community" is a photographic study by Gazin illustrating the evolving and expansive Persian Jewish Community that has flourished in Southern California, with particular emphasis in Los Angeles.
The resulting Photographic Archive is an assemblage replete with video interviews, film negatives, digitally processed images, archival prints, and community ephemera collected since 1999 during the course of Gazin’s primary immersion research and describes insular enclaves across the city, the maintenance of cultural rituals, and emergent civic leadership, professional accomplishment, the cross-cultural business infrastructure arising from assimilation and the emergence of the first American-Iranian generation, yet to be defined and self-determined. The project captures history in the making and includes the renovation of the infamous Los Angeles Theatre, City Hall Nouruz celebrations, recent immigration for Iran and public demonstrations of Iranian pride.
Click here for more information about the installation or read article recently published in JewishJournal.com.
The installation and exhibit closes this Sunday, March 10.