melvin sokolsky | Michele Roohani

I always thought that a woman out of a Persian Miniature will be known as the Iranian Marianne—maybe something like this dreamy painting by Farah Ossouli:

or the ageless super model, Yasmin Parvaneh (picture on the left) or her daughter Amber Le Bon (on the right):

It could have been one of the young beautiful movie stars or myriads of miscellaneous beauty queens or even one of these two who represent the separate worlds of today’s Iranian women:

Little did we know that an unknown young woman, Neda Agha Soltan, killed ruthlessly in the Iranian election protests last month would be the face of the Persian woman to the world…

Neda was a “casualty” of the conflict; she gave a face to the faceless victims. May she not have been killed in vain…

I am sure Melvin Sokolsky doesn’t mind the great Reza being inspired by him in making the Neda masks.

I am a bibliophile and not ashamed to admit it! I love good books, and as much as I read online, paper and ink remain sacred to me. My love for books is thanks to my father’s great library of classics.

I went to the Los Angeles Central Library looking for some books and I couldn’t resist taking these pictures and sharing them with you. This library burnt in 1986—something about burning books fills me up with utter sadness and an enormous sense of loss (remember Fahrenheit 451?)

To see the most beautiful libraries of the world visit this site. We need these in a world where “print” increasingly resembles an endangered species.

The books that were somewhat burnt yet still salvageable are so fragile that they have to be kept in special boxes. You can still see the black soot on them:

You can’t check out the more damaged ones because of their fragility like this one:

The good news is that there are thousands of wonderful and “healthy” books in this library and the reading rooms are very pleasant.

This is one book I have promised myself to read one day:

But who has the courage to even contemplate these ones:

André Kertész‘s newly reissued photo essay “On Reading“, features 66 images, taken between 1915 and 1970, of people enraptured by print.

“Kertész’s images celebrate the power and pleasure of this solitary activity and capture the deeply personal, yet universal moment of reading. This poetic book that has long been out of print is even more compelling today in a world where “print” increasingly resembles an endangered species.”

Even if Jeff Gomez argues that we are at a Gutenbergian moment, in which writers, publishers and readers must make the jump from paper to the more fluid territory of the screen, I can’t imagine being without the smell and the feel of paper.

I still print everything serious that I want to read because staring at my screen bothers my eyes.

“Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.” Alfred Whitney

Speaking of great photographers, I went to Melvin Sokolsky’s opening night last thursday at Fahey/Klein Gallery. I’ve had the privilege of taking a “Master Class” at UCLA with him some years ago. His pictures have remained as fresh as the day he took them and unbruised by time.