The blurry image of the soldiers in Maryam Takhtkeshian’s photographs is so impressive that urges the viewer to visit the rest of the exhibition and try to discover the connection in this collection.
Takhtkeshian’s photo and video exhibition is divided in some sections. The most important one, which has also occupied the most space in the gallery, contains large-framed photographs taken with an analog camera as old as the second world war and expired negatives, and because of them, the images of the soldiers in the city have been captured so vague and distorted. This choice has given her an opportunity to be able to capture them apart from their individual identities and also create a link between the material of her photographs and the black-and-white video she has displayed in the Silk Road Gallery; a video of a combination of rarely seen images of the soldiers in the war who are heading to fight after some rest and playing games and laughter.
But in the second hall of the gallery, the space changes. After some images from the soldiers being sleeping or some vague photographs that reminiscent a feeling of corpse, the exhibition ends with an installation of the martyrs’ personal photos printed on the glass (Wet Collodion Technique) and a page of an ID-Card with a seal of the martyr.
Maryam Takhtkeshian who has had years of experience in cinema photography, is narrating a story in this collection, though in an insensible way. A story of a path that reveals it to her audience with a red line at the bottom of her frames, following by some signs around the personal photos’ glasses.
