ABSTRACT
Looking at several photographs of Mahd-e ʿOlya III (1805-73), the mother of the king Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar (r. 1848-96), it is not easy to determine how powerful, headstrong, and ambitious she really was (Figures 3.1-3.2).1 In the photograph with her entourage, the woman on the right in the background leans in close to Mahd-e ʿOlya with much affection on her face. But is it possible to tell from her photographic portraits that Mahd-e ʿOlya was a savvy politician, brilliant writer, overbearing mother, a beautiful woman, and supposedly a very amorous lover? Or just because she is represented at all indicates her power and position? Although only in creative license, the Iranian television serial Amir Kabir (1364/1985) depicts her suffocating and killing her ex-husband Mohammad Shah Qajar (r. 1834-48) and then yelling at his corpse, further imagining her as a tour-de-force, a woman of passionate fury, and a hysteric who craved unlimited power. Yet the extant photographs taken of her by her son, who sought so desperately to control her to the point of putting her under house arrest, express both his desire for control and his own tethering to his strong-willed mother that had shaped his own desires. Reading her desires proves difficult, so in subaltern fashion one reads her desires through her son’s but realizes that Nasir alDin Shah could only represent her as he wished her to be and not wholly as she really “was,” thus continually questioning the limits of truth in photography.
