Parma photo exhibition offers travel to long-gone Middle East

Parma photo exhibition offers travel to long-gone Middle East

PARMA, Italy - An unusual exhibition of photographs of the Middle East taken in the seven years to 2005 before much of the region descended into violence has just opened in Parma, Italy.

The “Safar” (“Journey”) shows off the work of Italian-Iranian photographer Farian Sabahi. However, it not only displays 60 of her images taken in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Yemen but it is accompanied by a sound track of voices variously in Arabic, Persian, Italian, French and English.

Nor are they any old voices; they include Orhan Pamuk, Turkish writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature; Father Paolo dell’Oglio; Syrian poet Adonis; a fisherman on the Tigris; former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein; a homosexual man in Dubai; former Iranian President Muhammad Khatami; architect Darab Diba; philosopher Dariush Shayegan; Pakistani attorney and activist Bilqis Tahira; Azerbaijani historian Altay Geyushev; Azerbaijani artist and gallery owner Aida Mahmudova; film director Pierpaolo Pasolini; Yemeni activist and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Tawakkol Karman and Iranian writer Azar Nafisi.