Picture This: The secret meaning of Iranian photographs

Sadegh Tirafkan, "Untitled" from the Endless series, 2009 digital photo collage. Courtesy The Estate of Sadegh Tirafkan and The Huffington Post. The images communicate something sexual and at the same time violent," says curator Abbas Daneshvari, "but it's rather difficult for a system to see it as purely sexual and the violent aspect, of course, isn't something that they would object to."

by Leo Duran, KPCC

When you're an artist in Iran, you live a harsh reality.

Make a politically subversive sculpture and you're censored. Create a painting that challenges religious norms and you're censored.

But a new art exhibition showcases how Iranian photographers are able to create images into social and political commentary that fly under the radar.

"The government of Iran is a religious theocratic government. And therefore it controls every facet of creativity in Iran," says Abbas Daneshvari, curator of a collection of Iranian photography at the Fine Arts Gallery at Cal State Los Angeles.

"[But artists] have arrived at the point that they can express themselves in symbolic and metaphoric terms wherein it's rather difficult to decipher their messages."

For example, "Untitled" is a photo collage of two men who look like they're locked in a bloody fight. However, one could also say they're drawn together in a passionate embrace. The image is by Sadegh Tirafkan, who is gay.

"The images communicate something sexual and at the same time violent," says Daneshvari, "but it's rather difficult for a system to see it as purely sexual and the violent aspect, of course, isn't something that they would object to."

Another picture he highlights seems pretty mundane. "Reza Abbasi," by Mohammad Ghazali is just a photo of a random street. However, it's actually taken from the eyes of a sculpture of the revered artist Reza Abbasi.

"We look up to these monuments as our ideals," says curator Abbas Daneshvari, "and when we see ourselves from the eyes of the monuments we are precisely what we have always denied ourselves to be: a people in flux, a culture that is really governed by ordinary, mundane, quotidian principles."

These hidden meanings are rife throughout Iranian photography, he says, because the form specifically allows artists to break with tradition and reality.

"You question your own history, you question your own identity, you question your own thoughts, you even question your own language," says Daneshvari.

The exhibit of Contemporary Iranian Photography runs at the Fine Arts Gallery of California State University, Los Angeles until May 7.

Amirali Ghasemi, Tehran Remixed : Party Series, Tehran Remixed: Party Series is an ongoing photo based interactive project started in 2005. Courtesy of the artist. Amir Ali Ghasemi's "Party" series addresses issues of identity within a culture. "Throughout contemporary Iranian photography," says curator Abbas Daneshvari, "we see this whitening out of individual identity, and we always come back to a state-defined identity."

Reza Abbasi, 17th Century Painter, Analog photography - DIASEC, 134.4x112 cm, 2009 – 2011 Edition of 7 + AP. Courtesy Assar Art Gallery. "Reza Abbasi," by Mohammad Ghazali is part of series of pictures. He photographs the street from the eyes of sculptures of Iran's most revered people. "We look up to these monuments as our ideals," says curator Abbas Daneshvari, "and when we see ourselves from the eyes of the monuments we are precisely what we have always denied ourselves to be: a people in flux, a culture that is really governed by ordinary, mundane, quotidian principles."

"Ms Hybrid" is by Shirin Aliabadi, and addresses issues of women and Westernization within Islamic Iran. "Even though they are forced to wear these headdresses," says curator Abbas Daneshvari, "they nevertheless bleach their hair as they get nose jobs, and they try to be as Western as possible." Courtesy The Reel Foto.

"Police Women," by Abbas Kowsari captures real moments that appear wholly unreal. In this case, female trainees at a police station as they rappel down a building face. Courtesy Candlestar.

One example from Shadi Ghadirian's "Like Every Day" series is a commentary on the daily tasks that women are consigned to and defined by in Iranian culture. Courtesy KPCC.

Contemporary Iranian Photography

At the Fine Arts Gallery of California State University, Los Angeles

April 12^th - May 7^th 2014

by Abbas Daneshvari, PhD, Cal State L.A.

Every contemporary expression hangs in the balance until an inexplicable judgment of history either validates or rejects it. The contemporary arts of Iran, therefore, have yet to live across many zones of criticism, debate, and philosophical understanding on the way to more widespread and long-term notice. Nevertheless, at this crossroads, I believe that Iran’s contemporary arts––especially photography, the genius of its artistic expression––bespeak a wholly different frame of vision and production than that of any other time or place. Although a great deal of research and work is necessary to determine the aesthetic and historical significance of this current display, we may be assured that the so-far-generated polemics regarding its place and meaning have laid the foundation for its enduring significance not only in Iran but also worldwide.   

The phenomenon of contemporary  Iranian photography is quite surprising for rarely has so much of a period’s art appeared so simple yet turned out to be so complex. Mohammad Ghazali’s “Where the Heads of the Renowned Rest” and Shirin Aliabadi’s “Miss Hybrid,” among many others presented in this exhibit, prove this point. Ghazali’s urban images appear at first to be ordinary, quotidian photography, until after some scrutiny, one enters the horizon of his profound metaphysical subversions. Aliabadi, who may be viewed as playful and even superficial, represents one of those interstices of play where the paradox of desire and control, of simulation and dissimulation, have made transparent both the microcosm and macrocosm of Iran’s culture. Her images are filled with remembrances of past psychologies that can be measured, albeit subtly, beneath the façade of the work’s modern females. 

Parastou Forouhar is another example of contemporary photography whose significance is more than surface deep; her references to earlier historical signs are more about the instability of such signs than their assumed values. Parastou is a master at displaying the paradox in theocracy and aesthetics by deftly communicating the beauty in horror and the god in abuse and exploitation. She exemplifies a phenomenal ability to implement through subjective aesthetics the objective and concrete matters of state and history. In fact, contemporary Iranian photography, for the most part, exhibits an anti-historical and anti-metaphysical stance that makes it distinct from so much else occurring in the Middle East. 

It is amazing that within the strictest of institutional proscriptions, the contemporary artists of Iran have, for the most part, managed to chart new aesthetic and iconographic paths. Examples are such semiotic photographs as the “Moustache” and “Hand and Belt” series of Peyman Hooshmandzadeh, wherein the images are phenomenological acts of bracketing those signs that illuminate the various economic and cultural strata of Iran through fragments and fragmentary embodiments of value.

The complexity of Iran’s contemporary life and thus its photography is necessarily sodden with tensions and conflicts that, given the State’s rigid proscriptions, have produced a theatre of signs, evading and avoiding official obstacles. Therefore, as in the works of Tirafkan, Forouhar, Javadi, Kowsari, and Golshiri, though they demonstrate a variety of methodologies, we find a radical reformulation of signs as theatrical symbols. In these works the epistemology of cognition is bypassed so that meaning, highly discursive, may not be easily codified. Though political repression has vitiated freedom of expression, new tactics and strategies of communication have both overcome the State’s demands and enriched the various arts and their meanings.   

Via Cal State L.A. and KPCC