• ◯ Intro
• Installation Views
• Materials

Infos

Intro

Bahman Jalali (Tehran, 1944) is the leading representative of contemporary photography in Iran. His photographic work done over the last forty years is original and exemplary, but still little known owing both to particular circumstances of its evolution and to certain restrictions on its exhibition, which have to do with his own biography and the recent history of his country. His photographs are extremely valuable visual documents of the visible and hidden memory of the Iranian people since the 1970s and are a testimony both to the Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq war and the postwar years. His work also documents aspects of everyday life in Iran, the routine tasks of the fishermen in an Iranian port city, and the traditional architectural forms of the country, and includes photomontages with historic negatives. His role in the preservation, study and transmission of the photographic heritage of his country has made him a leading player in contemporary Iranian culture. He was one of the first photographers in Iran to conceive photography as an art and has helped to make it acceptable to the general public; indeed, he is one of the main promoters of the discipline in the country.

Jalali, a graduate in Economics and Political Sciences, taught himself photography. While he was still at university he began to acquire a reputation as a photographer. Although he is a professional, Jalali has always tried to take an amateur approach, distancing himself from the professional rules and producing his photographs as a civilian. After the outbreak of the war between Iran and Iraq, he got a job with the Sipa Press agency, but gave it up shortly afterwards. “I could only stand it for a few months. The photographs they wanted had nothing to do with what I wanted to do … I did documentary photography and the agencies wanted news … At that time it didn’t matter to me whether they published the photographs or not, the only thing that counted was taking them and keeping them. My work is not journalistic reporting, but documentary. For this reason I do the kind of work nobody does. The difference between people can be seen in their work”. When Bahman Jalali sets out to bear witness to and capture those events he is not at the service of any agency or any discourse, any propaganda or any dubious humanism. He assumes his role – as insignificant as it is implacable – as a witness and photographer.

Installation Views

Materials

• Exhibition folder
• Biography_Bahman Jalali
• Text Catherine David