[Editor’s note: While your editors take the day off, Flavorwire will be counting down some of our most popular features of 2011 so far. This post originally ran on March 25th. Enjoy your Memorial Day!] By now, hopefully, we all know something about the Iranian Revolution (and America’s lamentable role in it), whether we learned about it at school or in the pages of Persepolis. Still, it’s difficult to grasp the extent of the Ayatollah Khomeini regime’s impact on secular society without having a sense of what Iran was like in the years immediately preceding the revolution. That is precisely why the images from R&R Gallery‘s Before the Chador, a show curated by LA-based rapper Malkovich Music and comprised of 30 photos of an Iranian family before the conflict, feel so rare, valuable, and ultimately bittersweet. In one shot set at the beach, a bathing beauty leans against a classic ’60s car; in another, the entire clan clusters around the hookah at an evening gathering. One question lingers: What happened to this family after the revolution?
Angelenos can visit the show in person tomorrow night (March 26th), from 7pm-midnight. For a preview of Before the Chador, click through the gallery after the jump.
