Playing God in Imam Khomeini Square

By Negar Azimi

In the corner of Tehran’s monumental Imam Khomeini Square sits a mini museum complex housing bronzed busts of icons from Iran’s (gloried) past.  The modest, cramped  space, however, is not frequented by itinerant school groups or even tourists (yes, we do have some) seeking man-size relics of Iran’s once-civilizational-might.  Rather, dozens of young men—hairs greased back with mad quantities of hair product— hang out here, whistle at passing girls and generally do what young men do.  It’s all very harmless, and I often hang out with them.

And so the scene is set, while you may still be wondering what it is exactly that makes this busy intersection any different from hundreds of others within the concrete jungle that is Tehran. 

Situated within this particular museum space is photographer cum magician Bahram Afandizadeh.  Now Bahram is a modest, impossibly shy man, a far cry from the visual acrobatics of Testino or, say, Alas and Pigottcooing sweet nothings into Gisele’s ears.  But he remains impressive all the same.   In his own trademark manner, Bahram plays with his subjects—rendering them instant icons, immortalizing them in a way, fashioning their identities in a manner that is nothing short of vintage pre-Photoshop.  In short, his is an antiquated procedure, a primitive double exposure method in which the photographer takes an image of his subject against a plain background, rolls the film, and then takes an image of the background—usually a poster—of choice.

Suddenly, Cyrus is flocked by a pair of (hot) girls superimposed on an image of New York City, Mohamed’s face is framed by images of Imam Hossein, and Kiavash’s face is set to the always-idyllic Swiss countryside.  More than occasionally, Bahram’s creative liberties astound, and icons find themselves in the most unlikely company.  One time, I had my own image grafted onto a poster image depicting a waterfall; on one side of me was Ahmad Shah Massoud, Afghan national hero, and a McDonalds on the other.  I am not sure that the irony of the photomontage was as apparent to Bahram as it could have been.  Nevermind; for him, it was a masterful feat and, at least technically, opened up a new realm of possibility in his line of work.  Now whether Imam Hossein pasted onto a plastic fruit ensemble signifies a cheapening of the image of the Shia martyr or, in reverse fashion, the canonization of fruit as holy, is up for debate.  And it should be debated.  One thing is for sure, however: Bahram’s creations reflect the realization of one’s greatest fantasies, a sign that nothing is impossible in this world of ours.

Of course vernacular photographic practices of this variety are not limited to Tehran.  Last year, Magnum photographer Thomas Dworzak compiled Taliban (think turbans in shades of pink and magenta), Martin Parr has long been cataloguing Saddam Hussein memorabilia, while COLORS magazine did an issue on studio photography last year that this particular writer was implicated in.  But beyond a token aestheticization of what has been bandied about in irresponsible manner as things-kitsch, the events that take place in make-shift studios throughout the world, not the least of which is the museum in Imam Khomeini Square, verge on the miraculous, the fantastic.

A recent article by Holland Cotter in the New York Times reviewed the latest exhibition of the Beirut-based Arab Image Foundation in New York, an ambitious project called ‘Mapping Sitting.’  The exhibition, which highlights studio photography practices in the Arab region, highlights the role of photos in fixing identities.  Hundreds of passport photos lined the exhibition space.  Cotter, like many others, was seduced by the images, going as far as to liken the images to an “American high school yearbook.”  Go figure.  Another New York Times piece two years earlier deemed the great Armenian-Egyptian photographer Van Leo “the Richard Avedon of the Arab world.”  You can see where the point of reference almost inevitably falls.  But why not turn the tables?  By all accounts, these comments sound too much like, ‘hey, they look just like us.’  They can’t be all that bad, can they?  Dangerous territory.

And what of the Taliban wearing lipstick?  Aboriginals holding MK-47s and the Argentineans worshipping Leonardo DiCaprio?  All make for fascinating coffee table book fodder, no doubt, but it’s far too easy to call these visual manifestations of a creeping globalization, or better, some vague movement in these far-flung corners of the world toward an imagined modernity.  Instead, these practices have been around for a long time; they did not materialize out of thin air.  Just take a look at Mali’s awesome photographic history, for starters.

In Bahram’s particular context of Iran, the first commercial photography studios made use of flowers and rugs as icons within the sitting, photographs of pilgrims set against curtain backdrops of the harem have been taken in the pilgrimage cities of Qom and Mashad for years and more recently, mourning mothers have curated their own photomontages in the vitrines of fallen martyrs from the Iran-Iraq war at Behesht Zahra, Tehran’s sprawling cemetery.  Here, the act of being photographed verges on ritualistic, a crucial rite of passage, while the route the image (as object) takes functions as a means of memorializing the monumental, i.e. pilgrimage, martyrdom, manhood and so on.

And the photographs themselves become icons of sorts, tokens, talismans.  They adorn lockers, cars dashboards and living rooms in both baroque and baroque-less frames.  They are sent home to Afghanistan by migrant workers and refugees as testaments to their existence, and in some cases successes.  They are also sent from one friend to the next as mementos and tokens of affection.  When co-opted by the state, they take on the shape of pure propaganda.

But the pressing question remains, why bother with hanging Bahram’s images in the gallery context?  Are we appreciating his technical prowess, his keen eye and his curatorial collapse of time and space?  Or are we chuckling at the saturated colors, the hyper-dramatic poses and the, dare I say, kitsch of it all?  Where does his craft end and your Art begin?