I was very young when Mohammad Khatami first came to power as Iran's president. I remember very well, however, the day his name was announced as Iran's president-elect on state radio and television. I was counting the seconds for Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to leave.
I loved Khatami very much. All the photographers said he was photogenic and his news programs were never dull. Khatami also understood photography the importance of camera anglesl. He was a president who, during a speech, paid attention to even the farthest cameras, and every once in a while would glance towards them for the photographers to capture the shot they were awaiting. He never did anything unacceptable in front of the camera, unlike Ahmadinejad, who did not have a care about picking his nose in front of hundreds of television and news cameras. It felt like everyone was more at ease during the Khatami era. Not just the photographers, it seemed like everyone's lives had less stress and anxiety; at least a lot less than they came to have during Ahmadinejad's presidency.
Ahmadinejad's news programs were intensely boring and repetitive. He had long and difficult trips, sometimes two in one week. Myself and most of my colleagues were always escaping his trips and news programs. He had named himself "The President of the People," and was always traveling, yet he seemed to be thousands of miles away from the same people he said he held near, and the distance kept growing more and more everyday.
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