Dr Alexandru Balasescu, Royal University for Women, Bahrain
2005 award - pilot project
£7,800 for 3 months
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Iran has a long tradition of photography dating from the 19th century Qajar period. Invaluable visual material was created and throws much light on the early modern period in Iran. The rapid modernisation of Iran in the last ten years, the spread of digital technologies at the level of the population, the increasing internal migration from small to big urban centres, the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, not to forget natural disasters - are among the many factors that endanger both private collections and public archives of photography.
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This pilot project will investigate the potential and the feasibility of a long-term project aimed at safeguarding photographic materials from early modern Iran by:
- locating photographic material from the 19th and early 20th century in Iran which is archived in precarious conditions or in personal family collections and, where possible, to copy and/or transfer them to safer places;
- identifying Iranian museums or institutions that may be interested in archiving and making available to the public this kind of material. In parallel, this pilot investigation will seek to approximate the duration and cost of a project to relocate and/or copy the material.
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