‘Can I come over and take your picture?’: a decades-long archive captures cross-cultural womanhood

Through more than 300 photos, the New York City artist Clémence Polès Farhang captures the immigrant story and unconventional womanhood Clémence Polès Farhang started Passerby magazine around the time she immigrated to New York City. She says she wanted to explore womanhood as she navigated her own, and used publishing as a way to “deconstruct the internalized misogyny” from her own education. Polès Farhang’s mother, who left Iran during the revolution, believed women should have the right to choose what to do with their bodies, “yet would dismiss any woman who didn’t conform to conventional expectations,” says Polès Farhang, such as those didn’t dress “in a way she considered put together, or didn’t marry into heteronormative relationships within the right social class.” “I remember being scolded in my early 20s for embarrassing her by leaving the house barefaced,” she says. Continue reading...

By Sam Wolfson