Staging the past

Iranian history

Looking at the photographs that capture several deaths, there is one thing that strikes as reoccurring – a woman in a black dress and a red chador. She is the photographer Azadeh Akhlaghi herself, the mind behind the photographic series By an Eye Witness, which is on display at the exhibition titled ‘Staging the Past’.

“Red is a powerful colour. Among many other things it also symbolises blood. The only place where I have used red in my images, is in my scarf. And the reason why I am present in these photographs is to be a bystander or eyewitness to these deaths, which is also where the series derives its name from,” she says.

Art has always been a part of the resistance movements, especially in places where direct forms of resistance are not possible, and have risks involved. Iran has been one such country where direct resistance has led to official wrath and has not been the safest road to take. In such an atmosphere, artists and photographers have been driven to create artworks that are powerful and can stand the test of censorship and strict social and official laws. By an Eye Witness is one such attempt capturing incidents like the death of the Iranian revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleghani; death of a student activist shot by the secret police; and the death of Iranian political writer and poet Mirzadeh Eshghi among others.

Akhlaghi explains, “This series captures the 17 assassinations that took place between 1908 and 1998. As an Iranian and middle eastern, there have been many such incidents that have significantly affected the history and our lives. It was important for me to create a visual to these incidents, which will be otherwise easily forgotten. My photographs keep these memories fresh.”

“I chose these particular deaths out of the many possibilities because during that time there was no camera present to capture the moment. I started from the time of constitutional revolution in Iran,” she adds.

Owing to this lack of visual evidence, Akhlaghi faced many challenges while researching for this series. “I had to read a lot of literature, books, newspapers, magazines and records related to these deaths. I had to listen to the radio reports of that time. On some days, I was in the library from morning till night. In case of the recent incidents, I also had to talk to the actual eyewitnesses in order to get a sense of what exactly happened. The research took almost three to four years,” she says.

While it was still easy to know what had happened, recreating a scene of death was a tough job that included finer details. “Details like what the weather was like, on the day of a particular death, are impossible to know. While the eyewitnesses remember the death, they hardly remember other details. In such cases, I had to imagine for myself and interpret such elements. Obviously, I could never capture the real truth,” Akhlaghi tells Metrolife.

All the photographs taken by her have a cinematic appeal to them owing to her earlier work experience as an assistant director (between 2005 and 2008). While she made a couple of short films that were screened in numerous film festivals at the Berkeley Art Museum,
Pusan and Oslo, it was in 2009 that her interest shifted to conceptual art and staged photography.

“It was the time before Arab spring that a lot of incidents happened and I used to look at the media coverage. That is when I realised that there had been so many incidents in history that did not have any image to them. In future, it could mean they never happened. That is why it became so important for me to preserve these memories through photography,” she says.
While the series only contains photographs, the process of shooting was almost as elaborate as it is for cinema. “Working on a tight budget, I couldn’t hire actors, so all the people one sees in these photographs are family and friends. But apart from that I had all the equipment, a professional make-up team and people to help me out with the shoot,” she says.

The process included 40 days of pre-production and 20 days of shooting. All of the shooting happened in Tehran, apart from one photograph, which was shot in north of Iran, as the shoot required a river and there is no river in Tehran. “It was very difficult choosing locations
for these photographs. In Tehran, where I have photographed most of the images, the landscape keeps changing all the time. There is always lots of construction happening everywhere in Tehran. It is very difficult to go back and find the original location, where a particular death happened. I had to find something similar to what the real location was,” she elaborates.

Staging the Past, by Art Heritage Gallery, is on at the Shridharani Gallery, Triveni Kala Sangam, Mandi House, till November 2.