Summer 2009

A Visual Witness to Iran’s Revolution

An Essay in Words and Photographs By Reza

Iran, 1980
A demonstration marking the first anniversary of the revolution.



In the mid-1960’s, Reza Deghati taught himself the principles of photography as a 14 year old living in Tabriz, Iran. During the early 1970’s, his pictures were of rural society and architecture, which he then studied at the University of Tehran. The Islamic Revolution in 1979 shifted Reza’s focus to the city, where he covered the conflict for Agence France-Presse and Sipa Press. Reza, who uses only his first name, then photographed events in Iran for Newsweek until 1981, when he fled Iran after being forced into exile. In the nearly 30 years since then, Reza has traveled throughout the Middle East and Asia, and into Africa and Europe, and had his work published primarily in National Geographic. “I have been using my camera as a tool to bear witness,” he writes. In Afghanistan, Reza founded a nonprofit organization, Aina, through which he has supported the development of independent media and fostered cultural expression. In 2008, National Geographic’s Focal Point published “Reza War + Peace: A Photographer’s Journey,” and Reza has generously contributed photographs he took in Iran in 1979 and 1980 to our project. His words accompany the photos that follow.




Iran, 1979
Reza photographed the first massive demonstration against the shah, and in his book he describes how he came to be there with his camera.

My life was turned upside down one fall day in 1978. I was working as an architect in Tehran at the time and was in the architect’s office. Suddenly, I heard a strange, unfamiliar shout. Some angry protestors were screaming, “Marg bar shah!” (“Death to the shah!”). I went to watch from the window. Soldiers came and blocked the street from both sides.

The soldiers shot blindly into the crowd. The students could do nothing. Some died instantly, falling to the ground. Others, wounded, crawled away to protect themselves. Still others ran for shelter. Then I saw one student who was fleeing but taking pictures as he ran.

I stayed by the window for three hours, transfixed by the chaos below and in a complete state of shock. I made a decision. That night, I gave up my job. I turned in my keys to the architect’s office, and I took up my cameras, which I haven’t put down since. Instability ruled in Iran; unrest and demonstrations were occurring everywhere. At event after event, I met Don McCullin, Marc Riboud, Olivier Rebbot, and Michel Setboun, among many other photojournalists who had come to Iran from all over the world. They showed me the ropes. After a few months, my photographs started appearing in the international press.

I became a correspondent for Sipa Press and for Newsweek. I covered the revolution, the riots, the war against Iraq, the war against the Kurds. Iran was boiling. The utopian fervor of the revolution had soon given way to repression. The shah had been brought down, but the mullahs who took power crushed every form of opposition, every difference of opinion. The first victims were the former political prisoners who had fought against the shah. This carnage led me to a sad observation: Hasn’t history shown us that every revolution eats its own young?

In February 1981, I was wounded on the Iran-Iraq front by a shell blast. The Iranian government was closing down the borders. My wound served as a pretext for me to leave the country. I went overseas for medical treatment. A few days before I left, I had learned that I was a wanted man, sentenced to death because of my photographs. My journey outside my country would be a long one.




Fabric Store, Iran, 1979
For months, I had watched the black chadors take over, becoming more and more widespread in the towns and the countryside. Yet Iran has a variety of people, a multiplicity of colors and landscapes. Even though decades have passed since I last saw them, I can still recall the rural women with their colorful petticoats, which contrasted with the red of their houses, made of clay. And I can still see the vividly colored rugs and the fabrics with the elaborately worked embroidery.

When I entered this fabric shop, where the only choice lay in the weave of the material, I felt stifled and depressed. The only style available was for the chador; the only color offered was black.

During those days, I often felt that, unconsciously, the people of Iran had agreed to go into mourning.




Iran, Kurdistan, 1980
Reza met an 11-year-old boy named Peyman in Kurdistan, whose father had been killed and, as they spoke, Peyman said to him, “What else is there to say about my life, about our fate as a people who are refused an identity? What about you? You say you know a little about us through your camera lens. You say you will tell the world about us. But I have a hard time understanding how you will do this. Come, I will introduce you to my grandfather.”

Reza went to his house, where they had tea. As he writes, “I thought about the Kurdish children I had come across, their eyes full of sadness. Peyman was watching me attentively but seemed distracted. He appeared weighed down, as though he were dozens of years older. Despite their grief, his family welcomed me. After we finished tea, I left the sad warmth of their home. As I reached the corner of the street, I heard a violent blast. Then there was silence, then screams, the despair and horror of a mother whose children have just been torn from her. I turned around. In the dust of the dirt and rocks pulverized by the bomb’s impact, I saw some motionless bodies.”

Peyman, his sister and his grandfather had just been murdered—bombed by the Revolutionary Guards.




Iran, 1980: Ayatollah Khomeini
At last, I had the opportunity to photograph Ayatollah Khomeini in an intimate, private setting. This would be my chance to try to gain some understanding of this man who had become such a powerful enigma. He was sitting in a bare room, which had no past or future, no history or memory. I had time to take only three photos. Then he cut me off, saying harshly, “I’m tired.” Throughout our session, he never looked me in the eye. I had sought his gaze to silence a doubt that had lurked in me since his return to Iran a year earlier. When he arrived, a reporter had asked him what he felt about being back after 15 years of exile. His reply, “Nothing.”

He was the symbol of hope for an entire nation. We had risen up against the shah in a revolution that had erupted spontaneously throughout the country. But after my brief encounter with Khomeini, the doubt I felt gave way to the certainty that a fist was about to come down on our dreams of justice and freedom.

A year after I took this photo, I left Iran, forced into exile. Earlier I had been arrested by the shah’s secret police for being a dissident. I was imprisoned for three years and tortured for five months. Now, because of my photographs showing the repression carried out by Khomeini’s regime, I was under threat from his government and had to flee. In the years since then, I have been a nomad searching for a part of my homeland in every country I visit—a quest that is like picking up and reassembling the scattered pieces of a puzzle. My camera is always looking for the truth that often hides in the shadows of events.




Iran, Kurdistan, 1980
Kurdish house bombarded by Iranian Revolutionary Guards.




Cemetery, Iran, 1981
In writing about his journey to becoming a photographer in Iran and his departure from his country, Reza observes that “Iran had become a huge cemetery, where figures dressed in black wandered among the tombs.”

2 Responses to A Visual Witness to Iran’s Revolution
Mahasti says:
June 25, 2009 at 12:19pm
The photo essay on Khomeini is too chilling for words.
Casey Brown-Myers says:
June 20, 2009 at 1:33am
What a fantastic essay of photos of history.
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