Keep Calm, I’m Queen

In recent years, the phrase “Keep Calm, I’m Queen” has appeared on clothes and objects around the world, including in Iran. It spread at the same time as a new wave of cosmetic surgery, when many people were reshaping their faces and exaggerating their appearance, their behaviour and their way of life, much as social media and consumer culture encourage us to polish surfaces.

Against this tide, I went looking for the faces of Iranian women from the past: women from a time long gone, whose appearance and manner owed nothing to such exaggeration.