Image Politics: Photography in Revolution and Resistance in Iran Today

Image Politics: The Role of Photography in Revolution and Resistance in Iran Today

Photography plays a critical role in the current protests in Iran, sparked by the death of 22-year old Jina Mahsa Amini at the hands of the morality police in September 2022. The protests and how photographic imagery is used in them are both part of a longer history of resistance and revolution in Iran. The repeated reproduction of specific photographic images has led to an iconization, which visualizes the ongoing struggle through focusing on the likenesses of concrete figures and memorializing those who have passed away. The circulation of photographic images of the protests, and of those injured or killed, has to be understood in the context of visual and photographic censorship by the Iranian regime. It can also be seen as a counterweight to the almost omnipresent state-sponsored imagery of religious leaders and war martyrs in the public sphere. Looking at the photographs related to the recent protests, sharing, printing, and publishing them is, therefore, an act of defiance and resistance in itself. While this engagement with the imagery obstructs any aim to distract from the violence taking place, it also raises questions regarding the selection and modification processes taking place. However, what is clear, is that the existence and reproduction of the photographs is not just an illustration in a media article, but rather a refusal to capitulate or to be made invisible. Lecture by Dr Mira Xenia Schwerda, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH).

Panel members:

Prof. Nacim Pak-Shiraz (chair; University of Edinburgh)

Prof. Andrew Patrizio (University of Edinburgh)

Prof. Ali Ansari (University of St Andrews)

Asst. Prof. Nancy Demerdash (Albion College)

A drinks reception will follow the panel. This event is presented by IASH and GENDER.ED.

Biography

Dr Mira Xenia Schwerda is a historian of global modern art and visual culture, with a special focus on the Middle East, and a historian of print and photography. Her book manuscript-in-progress, tentatively titled Between Art and Propaganda: Photographing Revolution in Modern Iran (1905-1911), focuses on the imagery of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution and presents a new history of the visual narratives of political violence brought about by the triad of the telegraph, printing press, and photography. Her work interrogates the relationship between photography and politics. Publications include: her article “Death on Display: Mirza Reza Kirmani, Pr*son Portraiture and the Depiction of Public Executions in Qajar Iran” (Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, vol. 8, issue 2-3 (2015), 172–191) and her essay “Iranian Photography: From the Court, to the Studio, to the Street” (in Mary McWilliams and David J. Roxburgh, eds., Technologies of the Image: Art in 19th-Century Iran, Cambridge/New Haven: Harvard Art Museums/Yale University Press, 2017, 81-106). Having received her PhD from Harvard in 2020, after completing a MA in the History of Art and Archaeology at Princeton and a Magister Artium in History and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Tübingen, she has previously worked at the Harvard Art Museums, where she curated the photography section of the exhibition Technologies of the Image: Art in 19th-Century Iran. Dr. Schwerda is also the co-editor of the journal Art in Translation, a founding member of Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, and the co-founder and co-convenor of the Virtual Islamic Art History Seminar Series.

This is a free event, which means we overbook to allow for no-shows and to avoid empty seats. While we generally do not have to turn people away, this does mean we cannot guarantee everyone a place. Admission is on a first come, first served basis.

Banner image: Touraj Saberivand, Untitled, digital montage, 2022. All rights reserved.

Lower image by ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo. All rights reserved.

Host or Publisher Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH)