Photographing resistance in Iran

Two Iranian photographers - Azadeh Akhlaghi and Babak Kazemi - have brought to the Capital an exhibition of their photographs titled “Staging the Past”. The works on display put forth themes that resonate with the human experience — democracy, censorship, art, history, and love.

Azadeh’s works include panoramas that are carefully researched assassination events, while Babak’s images are softer and capture the internal struggle to attain ‘freedom’.

Capturing a period of censorship

Both photographers have lived through the social and political fallout of the overthrow of the Shah and the Iran-Iraq war, a period of practically continuous censorship. Consequently, many images reveal a tendency towards ‘staged’ photography.

The artists have woven hard facts with a poetic imagination that draws on the rich, spiritual aesthetics of Iran’s past to create a textual poetry where resistance becomes a performance act.

Akhlaghi’s series ‘By an Eyeitness’ has photographs that are based on official eyewitness accounts that detail the assassinations of known Left-leaning revolutionaries or individuals in Iran.

Recreating assassinations

The photographer recreates 17 assassinations that took place between 1908 and 1998 and inserts herself in each image wearing a red chador. The artist will be in the city on October 19 to talk about her work.

Babak Kazemi’s series ‘The Exit of Shirin and Farhad, Bodies and Past Continuous Tense’ comments on the struggle of couples who must leave their homeland to find freedom. Kazemi says: “It’s hard to imagine what life or love is like here. Some people leave the country because they are homosexual, others because they love each other but don’t want to get married, as that would be unacceptable”.

The exhibition is on at at the Shridharani Gallery, Triveni Kala Sangam, till November 2.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/photographing-resistance-in-iran/article9228090.ece