Mum’s still got it: Sammaneh Pourshafighi’s finalist image for the National Photographic Portrait Prize 2023
This image from the National Photographic Portrait Prize is titled “Portrait of my Mother as an Ethno-Futurist Icon”. What’s that all about?
It’s not just the dazzling colours and funky accessories that make this image stand out in the National Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition, which opens today at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. It’s the title of the work, too: Portrait of my Mother as an Ethno-Futurist Icon. What’s that all about?
It turns out that photographer Sammaneh Pourshafighi’s mum Maryam had come down from the Gold Coast to stay with her in Melbourne, and Sammaneh talked her into being her artistic muse for the day. Maryam was invited to dig into her daughter’s large collection of vintage clothes and accessories, and they put together this fabulous get-up topped off with Rihanna by Dior sunnies that Sammaneh bought a few years ago. (“They cost me a week’s pay but I had to have them,” she laughs.) For a background, they simply threw a patterned tablecloth over a fence in the garden.
Maryam is a friendly and vivacious 66-year-old who works at a kindergarten, loves T.Rex and David Bowie, believes in aliens, and always wears bright, bold colours – “because they make me happy”. She lived in Iran until 1984, when the family emigrated to Australia with an infant Sammaneh. “We wanted a future for our daughter, which wasn’t possible under the Islamic regime,” she says. They settled on the Gold Coast, where their household became a little oasis of Persian culture. “We ate only Persian food, and spoke only Farsi at mealtimes,” recalls Sammaneh, 40, whose art practice explores notions of identity and culture.
She had a particular idea for this photoshoot. “I wanted to capture Mum’s colourful personality, her dedication to future thinking and her transcultural identity,” she says. Maryam was asked to pose while thinking about aliens – they regularly visit Earth and are all around us, she insists. The result? A lovely, kooky portrait, bursting with colour and interest – a piece of photographic art, but also a personal record of a memorable mother-and-daughter day, getting creative and dressing up and hooting with laughter. “We had a wonderful time,” Maryam beams. “I love to colour myself up like that!”