chair

Canon AV-1 / Kalimar 28mm / Ilford HP5+ 400

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". . . I started the class by picking up a chair and placing it in front of me. What do you see? I asked the class. A chair. Then I placed the chair upside down. Now what do you see? Still a chair. Then I straightened the chair and asked a few students to stand in different places around the room, and asked both those standing and those sitting to describe the same chair. You see this is a chair, but when you come to describe it, you do so from where you are positioned, and from you own perspective, and so you cannot say there is only one way of seeing a chair, can you? No, obviously not. If you cannot say this about so simple an object as a chair, how can you possibly pass an absolute judgement on any given individual?"

Excerpt from Azar Nafisi's "Reading Lolita in Tehran"