Explore ICP’s photobook library during ICP’s Photobook Club, a community meet-up for book enthusiasts, photographers, and lovers of printed images. Bring your favorite photobook, zine, or other image focused publication to share while exploring monthly selections from the ICP stacks during this community-building event.
This month, explore selections from artist, educator, and activist Sheida Soleimani whose exhibition, Sheida Soleimani: Panjereh, is on view at ICP through September 28.
ICP’s reading library contains over 20,000 books and periodicals. The reading room is currently open to the public during ICP’s monthly Photobook Club, to researchers by appointment, and to members during Library Member Hours. Learn more about ICP’s Library here.
About the Exhibition
In Panjereh, Soleimani uses her family’s history—specifically her parents' flight from Iran as political refugees following the 1979 revolution—as a framework for exploring how meaning and memory are shaped by migration.
Known for her studio-based constructions that layer photographs, props, live animals, and her parents into magical realist tableaus, Soleimani expands this approach in Panjereh while also debuting a new body of work: a series of close-up analogue photographs of injured birds. These works draw from her practice as a federally licensed wildlife rehabilitator and founder of Congress of the Birds, a care tradition she inherited from her mother.
In these new images, Soleimani draws attention to the plight of migratory birds, many of whom are wounded on their journeys through populated areas, using them as metaphors for the social, political, and environmental barriers faced by displaced people around the world. The exhibition also includes a new site-specific wall drawing created especially for ICP’s galleries.
Image by Sheida Soleimani, Behind the door.
