When the Puppets Lean Forward
Meeting a childhood memory through a Qajar image
When I first saw this photograph of Qajar-era puppets in the Myron Bement Smith Collection, it felt less like searching an archive and more like brushing against something I already knew. Antoin Sevruguin made the image in the late nineteenth century, yet it carried a quiet familiarity. As I retouched and colourised it, the puppets seemed to drift gently forward, as if recognising a small echo in me.
I had seen puppets like these as a child at birthdays and little gatherings, moments that flashed by quickly but stayed somewhere beneath the surface. Bringing colour back to the photograph stirred those traces. It felt like meeting a memory that had been waiting patiently.
The figures became unexpectedly close. The woman in red, the pahlevan holding a pair of meels (a type of exercise club) and the small soldiers holding their poses all seemed to carry the mood of those early encounters. The work felt less like altering an image and more like listening to it. Something in the photograph and something in me seemed to lean towards each other. The image did not complete its story; it simply opened a small space where memory could return. In restoring it, I was not trying to recreate what once was. I was allowing the past to come closer for a moment so that I could see it again.
© Mehrdad Aref-Adib 2025
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