The Fold by Hoda Afshar

£45.00

Publisher: Loose Joints Publishing

Year: 2026

Format: Softcover

Edition: First

Condition: New

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.

For the first time in her practice, Afshar engages directly with an archival body of work. Having discovered that the museum’s online archive automatically cropped de Clérambault's images upon downloading, Afshar furthers this degradation into an embedded commentary. By darkroom printing and digitally manipulating these fragments, she ruptures their original intent and transforms them into a space of resistance. Her interventions turn the gaze back on itself—inviting viewers to question the power dynamics woven into the act of looking, and to confront the cultural biases projected onto the veil.

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