Fishing, Photography and Principles

Kobra Arbabi, a native of Hengam Island, has been fishing for more than twenty years.Photographs by Forough Alaei

This article from the New Yorker is the rare confluence of three streams of life that are important to me; boats, beautiful photography and social justice. The photographer Forough Alaei was born in 1989 in Iran, where in her 20’s she studied law. But at the time she was also a keen painter. Forough switched to photography in 2015 and quickly became a photojournalist, soon moving into documentary photography and filmmaking. Given her background she works mainly on social issues with a focus on Iranian women. She's known globally for her stories on female football fans, where she. disguised herself as a boy to enter the stadium as it was forbidden for women to attend men’s matches. This led to her creating Time magazine's "Heroes of the Year" Cover about the "woman, life, freedom" movement in Iran in 2022. Her latest work covers of a community of fisherwomen on a remote island in the Persian Gulf is spectacular. The article by Robin Wright appeared in the New Yorker Magazine on 7th June.

Spend a few minutes looking hard and reading deeply.


Iran’s Daughters of the Sea

Hengam Island is a tropical isle off the coast of Iran, at the southern end of the Persian Gulf. Just fourteen square miles, it has three villages with only a few hundred families. The island has long been recognized for its geostrategic importance. Nearchus, the Greek explorer and admiral of Alexander the Great’s naval fleet, referenced it when he navigated the Gulf in the fourth century B.C. Hengam was occupied by the Portuguese military in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1913, Britain established a naval base there. Since the late nineteen-forties, tanker ships have skirted Hengam en route to the Strait of Hormuz, a global choke point about thirty-seven miles away. A fifth of the world’s supply of oil and natural gas passes through it each day.

Khadijeh Ghodsinejad is the youngest female fisher in the community. She began accompanying her mother on fishing trips in a rowboat when she was four or five.

Today, Hengam may be most noted for its so-called daughters of the sea, the only fisherwomen in Iran—and probably in the eight other countries around the Gulf. Forough Alaei, a law student turned photojournalist, spent years documenting the women as they set off at dawn, without men and often alone, to ply the Gulf waters. In small, weathered boats, they fish for barracuda and spangled emperor, which have vibrant blue markings that change color when they are frightened or caught. Both fish are famed for their sharp teeth and ferocious bites.

READ ON HERE

After long hours on the water, a fisher grew weary and tied the fishing line to her toe, so that she could recline.



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Well Written - Part III