Three decades of Islamic Rule through the Lens of Photojournalism

Those putting a fifth decade of life behind them and who have personally lived through the heady days of the 1979 Islamic Revolution now find themselves recounting those events to the 20- and 30-year-olds for whom this story is more akin to ancient history. For those who have witnessed the Revolution and wish to convey the feeling that was in the air at that time, perhaps the best way is to document the accounts with photographs which have captured the ebullience and exuberance of a people who were changing the status quo.

But for our younger generation seeing the photos alone is not enough. Even though a photo is worth a thousand words, the new generation needs a helping hand to really bring that photo to life and get a sense of the unfathomable contained in the depths of the images. The younger generation does not automatically grasp what the stifling atmosphere inside the country was like; what it is like to be in a place where the press is censored and there is no means of access to unbiased information and where the state-run news services dispenses only news it deems fit. There must be a way to instill an awareness of all this in the younger generation.

Consider the photograph taken by Hussein Partovi,photographer  for Keyhan Newspaper, on the occasion of the visit by the homafars (a military rank for recruits with a high school diploma or a higher degree) to Ayatollah Khomeini on February 8, 1979. A turning point in the victory of the Revolution was reached when, after rumors of the photograph being a fake, Khomeini himself verified the photograph was in fact, no fake. For everyone to learn that the armed forces had also joined the people, a photograph was required. Only a photograph could supply proof to all that the armed forces were now on Ayatollah's Khomeini's side.

Of course, in those early months after the Revolution, numerous photographs used to be published in newspapers. There was, relatively speaking, a wide variety of photographs due to the lack of control by the new-born government of Khomeini and perhaps also for the purpose of intimidating supporters of the fallen Pahlavi regime. An example of such cases was the photo showing the execution of the heads of the former regime, which was repeatedly published in newspapers those days.

A study of the events over the past three decades in Iran shows the importance of photography and photographs that rose out of the Revolution and reached its peak with the hostage crisis at the American embassy in Tehran and the Iran-Iraq war. To bring home this point one need only mention the Pulitzer prize winning photographs  whose photographer would have to wait 27 years to have his identity become known. Such was the atmosphere of those days.

The ominous atmosphere of those days in Iran, execution of minority groups and dissidents of the new regime and mass murders were events about which perhaps the photograph alone, without extra commentary, was the best-suited medium to transmit information to the widest audience.

The photographs mentioned above showing the execution of resentful Kurds in Iran’s Kurdistan were taken by Jahangir Razmi. Razmi was able to receive his Pulitzer after 27 years only in 2006. Although it was the State, which, in order to promote itself, benefited most from the medium of photography, intense censorship and elimination of photographs showing groups and persuasions other than that of Ayatollah Khomeini and his companions became the most important obstacle to representing the truth for photographers.

Most of the photographs displayed during those times indicated people's support for the Regime. However, many images from the same era, even those showing Regime support, such as demonstrations with the presence of Iranian women who did not have Islamic covering and were without scarves and chadors, have all been eliminated. A clear example of this can be seen in the elimination of photos in The Book of Revolution by Maryam Zandi, a well-reputed photographer in Iran. In her own words, the Ministry of Islamic Guidance and Culture would only agree to allow the publication of the book on the condition that many of the photos be removed.

At the same time, the well-known photograph of the return of Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran in which he is seen descending the steps from the Air France plane onto the Iranian tarmac was subjected to heavy touching-up after it was taken. Abolhasan Banisadr, the first Prime Minister of Iran, and Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, the Foreign Minister of the Provisional Government, who are seen beside Ayatollah Khomeini in the original version of this photo, were removed later when the photo was published in the Iranian press. Abolhasan Banisadr had subsequently been forced to leave Iran due to his differences of opinion with Ayatollah Khomeini while Ghotbzadeh had been executed by the Regime.

This discretionary and contradictory treatment on the part of the Regime towards photography and photographers is also illustrated in the case of Abbas Attar. Attar was a renowned photographer at the Magnum Agency. On December 4, 2006 upon his return to Iran, he met with trouble after Keyhan Newspaper accused him of being Baha'i. Yet now, Fars News Agency, which has so unabashedly shown its unprofessional nature over the past few months, has no qualms in using Attar’s photos for the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution on its website.

The limitations imposed on photographers have greatly impeded their ability to carry out their professional duties. The worst case scenario is the that of  Zahra Kazemi, the Iranian-born Canadian photographer who was arrested while taking pictures of Evin Prison and was killed a few days later by prison interrogators.

Throughout the first two decades following the Iranian Revolution, when there was no such thing as the internet, the government had absolute control over the flow of information in and out of the country and controlled the entire media. But with the coming of the internet, which, ironically, the government itself imported, the government this time found itself up against an unknown. Cyber space allowed any individual to have access to information other than what was given to people through the official State-run media. Although even the internet has been subjected to intense control by security forces, it has continued to enable people to have access to a window to the world outside the establishment's official channels.

Thirty one years after the establishment of the world’s first Islamic republic, any media entity which aligns itself with the biased goals and desires of the Iranian government can stake its bets on a successful, professional future for its members. On the other hand, journalists and photographers of unaffiliated media will always have to worry about such things as losing their jobs or imprisonment and every kind of threat.

The internet has curbed the Iranian government’s ability to manage the flow of information the way it could in the 1980s and 1990s. Now access to the internet has opened up a hitherto unknown space where people can no longer be prevented from gaining information that had remained out-of-bounds for years. To curtail this access to information via the internet, the Iranian Regime has this time set out, in addition to filtering websites, to make widespread arrests of photographers and journalists and people who produce such news which circulates on the internet.

The June 2009 election occasioned the peak of this treatment by the Regime towards photographers who had only published their own photos. Majid Sayidi, Satiyar Emami, Mehraneh Atashi and Babak Bordbar were among photographers who were arrested. Many of the photographers whose photos were posted during the turbulent days in Iran on the front pages of reliable magazines around the world have now left the country and are homeless. However, at this historically important juncture, the people of Iran have found it one of the most important duties of the movement to capture events and by using amateur cameras or cell phones, have shouldered the responsibility that well-known photographers have been prevented from performing.

This initiative by the people of Iran shows the importance they hold in preserving truths that for thirty years have been hidden. The very simple image that was captured by ordinary people put Neda Aghasoltan in the world spotlight overnight. The Iranian government spoke of the photo of Neda's death as being a forgery, calling it the work of the Israelis and CIA, just like it once had made the same denials and spoke of the forged image of the execution of resentful Kurds thirty years ago. For three decades thousands of Nedas have been murdered in Iran because they stood up for their human rights. It is the failure to record their images that blinded the world to what was going on in Iran. Perhaps this is the reason why each angry Iranian has turned into a journalist himself, so that this time, he himself can remove the censorship that suppresses and that President Obama remembers Neda when receiving his peace prize.