Columbia Journalism Review
by Chava Gourarie
MAZIAR BAHARI WOULD HAVE BEEN AROUND 11 when he first saw a photograph by famed Iranian photographer Abbas. It was Iran, circa 1979. Bahari was flipping through a foreign magazine, brought into the country by a friend of his father’s, when his eyes landed on it.
The photo has since become an iconic emblem of the Iranian Revolution. In it, a woman runs through a street, chased by an angry crowd of men; several have grabbed the sleeves of her jacket and are brandishing sticks and umbrellas. The woman is an assumed supporter of Iran’s recently overthrown leader, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi; the men are revolutionaries who worked to free Iran from the shah’s authoritarian regime.
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