Zahra Kazemi
Date: 1949 - 2003
Region: North America
Subject: Political/Economic/Social Opinion
Medium: Photography
Artist: Zahra Kazemi
Confronting Bodies: Montreal's Cote St. Luc Library
Dates of Action: June, 2005
Location: Montreal's Cote St. Luc Library
Description of Artwork: Photographs of Palestinians
The Incident: Montreal's Cote St. Luc Library removed five of Candian-Iranian photographer Zahra Kazemi's photographs from a display after Jewish patrons complained of alleged "pro-Palestinian bias"; they left up the rest of the exhibition, which had already been displayed in Paris. Zahra Kazemi had been killed two years earlier under suspicious circumstances in an Iranian prison.
Results of Incident: Kazemi's son, Stephan Hachemi, called the removal of the Palestinian photographs "a violation of my mother's spirit" and rightly demanded that the library show the entire exhibit or nothing at all. So the library took down the entire show.
