16 June 2007

Mohammad Reza Shahroki Nejad - Shàr-Baafi

Mohammad Reza Shahroki Nejad is an Iranian journalist photographing for Hamshahri Newspaper which has the largest circulation in his country. Mohammad was our guest in December 2006 sharing with us series showing reality of Kurdish workers producing bricks.
This time Mohammed show us in premiere show his new series about a kind of cloth weaving called "Shàr-Baafi". Baafi means weaving and Shàr is a kind of fabric which is made of silk.
This kind of fabric weaving is carried out in Kashan, a city which is about 350 kilometers south of Tehran (capital city). In the past around 1000 workshops of "Sh àr-Baafi" were operating in Kashan and even A.Pope the orientalist had referred to them.
At the time the number of these workshops is even less than the fingers of a hand. In the past the wealth of a man was equal to the number of fabric bolts he had, as the warp of some fabrics were from gold.
This kind of textile industry doesn't almost exist now a days and just a few old men are still working on this job which is as a matter of fact, a very harsh job.
It took me a year to finish this collection and I had to go the whole way to get to these workshops. I named this collection "Dance of Fabric - Music of wood".







invited by Marcin Górski

Gruppo F inbox: Agnieszka Sym


June