Hoda Afshar, The Fold (2023)

• Paris Lettau

It is often said that our contemporary culture is saturated with images. However, it is also true that most images remain unseen. In fact, it could be argued that contemporary culture is saturated with unseen images struggling for visibility, to be seen. But what does it mean to “be seen” today?

A common answer to this question is that we are seen when we are represented and visible to others. But this answer risks confusing mere observation with recognition. When merely observed by another, one is reduced to being an object of the other’s gaze. (Just go to a contemporary art exhibition to experience the discomfort of the gaze of others.) Far from a neutral acknowledgment of one’s existence, this process of objectification ensnares us in the observer’s perceptions—and potentially their fantasies and delusions.

These fantasies and delusions were a topic of great interest to Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault (1872–1934), the subject of Hoda Afshar’s newly commissioned work The Fold (2023). Clérambault was a French psychiatrist who took thousands of photographs of veiled Islamic women and men when serving as the head of the psychiatric service of the French colonial army following the establishment of the French Protectorate in Morocco in 1912. Afshar has collated hundreds of these photographs, which are held by the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, and presented them in an immense grid of Polaroid-like snapshots.