Title: The History of Photography in Iran

Abstract: In this article, I provide a general history of the way photography was developed in Iran, and discuss some examples of early photography to elaborate the way amateur and professional Iranian photographers used the new medium to represent and document themselves and their cultures. Nineteenth-century Iran, I suggest, offers a unique context in which to explore what I call “contact vision,” that is a mode of photographic representation borne of cross-cultural encounters and circulation. Among the questions I address are: What were the cultural and political implications of the emergence of photography as modern technology and as art form during late Qajar dynasty? What is the relationship between this indigenous archive and Orientalism? My discussion of photography in Iran aims to offer a corrective both to the common assumption among many Western art historians and curators that Islamic prohibition against iconic representation prevented Middle Eastern people from photographing themselves and to the tendency among literary and cultural scholars who view Orientalism as a unilateral form of representation in which the European is the active subject and the Middle Easterner is the passive object of representation.

Keywords: photography, Orientalism, Iran, contact vision, Naser al-Din Shah

Author: Ali Behdad, Professor, English and Comparative Literature, UCLA, Los Angeles, State of California, USA.