The truth in black & white

Kaveh Golestan's best work in a book


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The truth in black & white
by Nima Mina
10-Mar-2008
 

Kaveh Golestan: Recording the Truth in Iran
Edited by Hengameh Golestan and Malu Halasa
Published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern (2007)

In April 2003 the award-winning photojournalist and documentary filmmaker Kaveh Golestan (born 1950 in Abadan) became the first prominent Iranian victim of the war in Iraq. More than four years after his death, in October 2007, Hatje Cantz Verlag in Germany published a book of tributes about Kaveh Golestan and his work. The book is edited by Kaveh’s widow Hengameh and the writer and editor Malu Halasa.

The introductory notes and articles are written by friends and colleagues including the BBC’s Jim Muir, the documentary filmmaker Maziar Bahari, the London-based veteran journalist and blogger Masoud Behnoud, Hojat Sepahvand and Mohammad Farnood. Contributions in Persian are translated into English by Hengameh and Kaveh’s only son Mehrak, a SOAS alumnus (BA Persian and Study of Religions 2007) and musician who lives between Tehran and London.

The book contains high definition reproductions of Golestan’s black and white photos. They are structured thematically and temporally under the chapter titles Shahr-e no (Tehran’s “red light district”) 1975-77, Laborers 1977, Children’s Asylum 1977, Revolution 1978-79, Kurdistan 1988-89, The Qaderi Dervishes of Kurdistan (1990), Iran-Iraq war 1980-88.

Golestan was trained and educated in the UK during the 1960s and early 70s. In the mid-1970s he returned to Iran and started working as a photojournalist in collaboration with various Iranian and western publications including Sabz (Iranian environmentalist periodical), Tehran Mosavvar (weekly Iranian magazine), Time, Life, and National Geographic.

According to Masoud Behnoud, the former editor of Sabz, Tehran Mosavvar and Ayandegan and one of Kaveh Golestan’s oldest companions in Iran, much of Golestan’s early works remained unpublished for years. These include his black and white photo documentary about the appalling conditions in a state-run children’s mental asylum and a series of photographs depicting poverty and social injustice in Tehran’s “red light district”. He was warned by the ancien regime’s secret police SAVAK not to disclose these pictures to foreigners so that the country’s outside image would not be tarnished. A selection of these photographs from the pre-1979s period of Golestan’s works is documented in the volume.

The real breakthrough in Kaveh Golestan’s career as an independent photojournalist occurred during Iran’s 1979 revolution. He was honoured with the Robert Capa Gold Medal in 1979 for his coverage of the Islamic Revolution. His photographs from Ruhollah Khomeini’s arrival in Iran in late January 1979 and first public appearances at the Alavi school in Tehran were published in Time magazine. In the summer of 1979, he travelled to Kurdistan, West Azerbaijan, Khuzestan and Turkmen Sahra in the province of Khorasan and documented the first deadly confrontations between Kurds and Turkmens and the recently established armed forces of the Islamic regime.

Between 1980 and 1988 he travelled to the frontline on numerous occasions and documented the Iran-Iraq war from the Iranian perspective. In 1988 he went to the Kurdish city of Halabcha in northern Iraq and documented the horrific scenes after the inhabitants were exterminated by Saddam Hussein’s army with chemical weapons.

In 1991 Golestan produced a documentary titled Recording the Truth about journalists suffering under the Islamic Republic’s censorship regime in post-war and post-cultural revolution Iran for BBC’s Channel 4. Following the broadcast of this film he was placed under house arrest for two years, lost his journalist’s ID card, and was barred from leaving the city of Tehran. Golestan taught at Tehran University’s School of Fine Arts and trained a generation of Iranian photojournalists, some of whom became internationally acclaimed in the years to follow.

Having experimented with film cameras in the years after the revolution, in the mid-1990s Golestan became increasingly interested in digital video technology and, in 1999, he joined the BBC’s Tehran bureau staff. During an assignment for the BBC in the vicinity of the Kurdish city of Suleimanieh in northern Iraq, on 2 April 2003, Kaveh Golestan died after stepping on an anti-tank mine, laid by retreating Iraqi soldiers, who were under attack from approaching US forces and Peshmargas from the Patriotic Union of Kurdestan. During this mission Golestan was accompanied by his friends and colleagues, the BBC Middle East correspondent Jim Muir and BBC world news producer Stewart Hughes, whose right leg was amputated as a result of the injuries he suffered in the same mine explosion. Golestan’s funeral in Tehran was attended by several hundred journalists, writers, photographers from in and outside Iran and – to quote the Iranian writer Cyrus Alinejad – “he was treated like a martyr”.

Although Golestan most consciously avoided becoming an “insider” of the Islamic Republic’s media establishment, several government officials including the late deputy minister of Islamic Guidance, Ahmad Bourqani and the member of the Islamic Parliament, Mohsen Armin, both from the reformist camp, attended his funeral.

With 168 pages in 25.5 x 30.5 cm format, this is the most extensive photography book that Hatje Cantz Verlag has published to date with the support of the Dutch Prince Klaus Fund. The US release of the book is expected in the spring of 2008.

Nima Mina is a member of academic staff at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.


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Isn't it ironic that this

by Anonymousk (not verified) on

Isn't it ironic that this photographer under the "evil Shah" was not put under house arrest nor punished but under "Agents of God on Earth" he was imprisoned and reduced to nothingness?