Woman Veiled and Woman Unveiled 

New Masses, October 2, 1934

Louis Lozowick

The sensationalized, exoticizing language used by author Joshua Kunitz in this New Masses article frames a critical conversation about gender through a Eurocentric male gaze. Louis Lozowick, who contributed the illustrations to this spread, uses a visual language that echoes Kunitz’ dehumanizing description of veiled women. These two images of women are meant to be a pair. The first woman appears with no identifiable face or individuating features. Diminished in scale and dwarfed by the looming mountain behind her, she is but a shadow. The second Woman Unveiled is triumphant and visually distinguished from the landscape through scale and the detail included in her costume.  She carries her child on her back, standing tall and straight. Presumably, this liberated, unveiled woman is free to engage with the world around her. Lozowick and Kunitz assert a quasi-colonial desire to save Tajikistani women while simultaneously transforming veiled women into an exotic object.

Grace Iverson