This is an Art Fund initiative for the British Museum and V&A and the broad aim is to create a world-class capsule collection of major names and emerging talents in photography from the Middle East (whether living in the region or in diaspora), from 1900 to today. The Art Fund has given the two museums grants over £150,000 for the collection and additional support for the tour of the collection. The Qajar series is based on studio portraits made in Iran during the Qajar period, which spanned the second half of the 19th century to the first two decades of the 20th. Like their predecessors, these formal studio portraits contain props that represent the aspirations of the sitters, but the objects they pose with are jarringly modern, such as a can of Pepsi, sunglasses or a mountain bike. The vendor has donated a further three photographs to the collection through the Art Fund.