The first major survey of contemporary Iranian photography in the United States, Persian Visions is an exhibition of more than sixty works by twenty of Iran’s most celebrated photographers. It is a gathering of personal perspectives, a view of contemporary Iran filtered through private, individual sensibilities even when addressing public concerns. Iran has distinguished itself with the spectacular quality and international presence of its film and visual art. Given the backdrop of attention increasingly focused on the art and culture of Iran, and now on the political crisis in that part of the world, an exhibition of this kind is most timely. The perspective of these artists contradicts the way many foreign photographers use the medium-which is to represent Iran and its people as purely exotic. In expressing their many different visions of their world, the contributors offer a look at both private and public realms. Such is the art of Shokoufeh Alidousti, whose self-portraits and family photographs explore both cultural and female identity. Esmail Abbasi draws on Persian literature for his subject matter,with contemporary notes on the present circumstances in Iran. Shahriar Tavakoli focuses on his family history through a series of portraits capturing the subtleties and mood of the Iranian family. In Koroush Adim’s Revelation series, the images inthe exhibition that feature the veil acknowledge this sign of culture, and yet the “revelation” is anything but simple. In Shahrokh Ja’fari’s work, his unusual spatial rendering of the veiled figure in effect serves as a demand that the viewer look and think harder about what can be shown through the visual. The artists represented in Persian Visions cannot entirely surmount the physical and cultural distance between Iran and the United States, and yet this exhibition builds a visual bridge that allows for differences even as it challenges viewers tobecome aware of other ways of being and seeing. Persian Visions was developed by Hamid Severi for the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Iran, and Gary Hallman of the Regis Center for Art at theUniversity of Minnesota. Academy Curator of Asian Art Julia White is coordinating the Honolulu presentation. The tour has been organized by International Arts & Artists, Washington, D.C. This exhibition is supported in part by grants from the ILEX Foundation; the University of Minnesota McKnight Arts and Humanities Endowment; the Department of Art, the Regis Center for Art, University of Minnesota, and the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art.