The Fold

Through critical reappropriation, Afshar reclaims a colonial photographic legacy fixated on the veiled woman.The Fold is a critical visual and psychological investigation into the enduring legacy of Orientalist and colonialist photographic practices, and the ways in which these gazes continue to shape how bodies—particularly veiled Islamic bodies—are seen, archived, and consumed.This new body of work by Iranian artist Hoda Afshar takes as its starting point the vast archive of Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault (1872–1934), a French psychiatrist and photographer who, in the early 20th century, produced thousands of images of veiled women—and sometimes men—in Morocco. Encountered by Afshar during her research at the musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac in Paris, these photographs were originally used by de Clérambault to support psychoanalytic theories around fantasy, covering, and desire, all filtered through a deeply colonial lens.