Photographs of Persepolis: Their Past, Present, and Future
Kiersten Neumann
Curator, Research Associate
Oriental Institute
Thursday
January 19, 2017
7:30 PM
Marie Irwin Community Center
18120 Highland Avenue
Homewood, IL
For more information call 773-268-6705 or visit http://southsuburbanarchsociety.weebly.com
*ADA-accessible All interested persons are invited to attend this lecture
The Oriental Institute Museum exhibition Persepolis: Images of an Empire presents large-format photographs of the ruins of one of the greatest dynastic centers of antiquity, built at the height of the Achaemenid Persian empire (550–330 BC). The photographs, taken during the Oriental Institute’s Persian Expedition (1931–1939), record the forests of columns, monumental audience halls, and stone relief carvings of the people who came from all corners of the empire to honor the Persian king. The show also explores the practice of photography itself and the nature of these photographs as both scientific records of an archaeological site and artistic visions of the ruins of a once powerful empire. This talk will explore the origins and continuation of this Achaemenid imperial visual legacy, with the dynastic center of Persepolis standing as a pinnacle of its success, as well as the role that photography, as a new apparatus of representation, played in constructing an image of the Orient and otherness in the 19th and early 20th century. Dr. Kiersten Neumann, curator of this exhibit, received her Ph.D. in Near Eastern Art and Archaeology from the University of California, Berkeley, in May 2014. Her many areas of specialization
include the role of photography in early excavations in the Middle East.
