Solo Photo Exhibition
Vakhahi
Najaf Shokri Ghobadi
Blur is a metaphor for the act of cheating in an exam; an attempt for reading under stress, at a moment when both the eyes and the mind are entangled. Clarity is always at risk of falling out of reach —especially when confronted with a dense, spell-like text, a text that resists being read.
Vaakhahi is a common term in the Iranian judiciary, meaning a request to set aside the verdict of a primary court. Yet to me, vaakhahi is a yearning for return: a return to the moment of judgment, to a more humane court where there is less anxiety and more opportunity— opportunity to offer the correct answer. The correct answer, perhaps compressed into a few centimeters of paper in the form of a brief petition. Cheat sheets, then, are nothing but such defenses in the tribunal of exams.
The photographs you see here are all taken from a single cheat sheet of a law exam—which I came across by chance.
This series of photographs is neither a celebration nor a condemnation of cheating; rather, it is an attempt to witness what is usually unseen: a moment of human vulnerability in confronting the sharp edge of the law, and the difficulty of imagining liberation from its trap. Especially when we believe we are right, but remain incapable of proving our claim or defending ourselves. Perhaps this is why every attempt at self-exoneration appears to us as something legitimate
To ease the difficulty of watching a hidden effort to cross the boundaries of the law—within an exam about the law itself—that is my intention in presenting these photographs.
