┐ partygoers and peacemakers └

© Amirali Ghasemi, from the series Party, 2005

“In your sixth paragraph, you complain how there are no tweeted pictures, or pictures from social media sites. You do know you were coming to an art show, not a journalism conference. In art shows, one typically exhibits works by artists, not from tweeting citizens. When you state, “How can you hope to show anything of the power of photography in the Middle East without including the citizen-journalism, the blogging,…” what are you referring to? Are you saying that the Middle East doesn’t have great photographers, only great photojournalists?

(…)

In your seventh paragraph, your lack of knowledge of anything to do with the Middle East becomes clear. Mr. Hodgson, Amirali Ghasemi is an Iranian artist, and those people in his photograph are attending a party in Tehran, which is the capital of Iran, not a city in Saudi Arabia. The only thing that is ‘trivial’ is why you were selected by the Financial Times to write an article about an exhibition from a region you clearly know nothing about.”

excerpt from a comment made by Taymour Grahne to the article Partygoers and peacemakers, by Francis Hodgson, published in the financial times, regarding the V&A exhibition of Middle Eastern photography.