Global and Iranian history are both closely intertwined with the lives and destinies of prominent figures. Every one of them has laid a brick on history’s wall, sometimes paying the price with their lives, men and women alike. Women have been especially influential in the past 200 years, writing much of contemporary Iranian history.
In Iran, women have increased public awareness about gender discrimination, raised the profile of and improved women’s rights, fought for literacy among women, and promoted the social status of women by counteracting religious pressures, participating in scientific projects, being involved in politics, influencing music, cinema... And so the list goes on.
This series aims to celebrate these renowned and respected Iranian women. They are women who represent the millions of women that influence their families and societies on a daily basis. Not all of the people profiled in the series are endorsed by IranWire, but their influence and impact cannot be overlooked. The articles are biographical stories that consider the lives of influential women in Iran.
IranWire readers are invited to send in suggestions for how we might expand the series. Contact IranWire via email (info@iranwire.com), on Facebook, or by tweeting us.
* * *
On September 3, 2015 Newsha Tavakolian received the Dutch Prince Claus Award, which honors “outstanding achievements in the field of culture and development” and is presented annually to “individuals, groups and organizations whose cultural actions have a positive impact on the development of their societies”. This is only the latest achievement for an Iranian photojournalist whose work has appeared in internationally renowned publications and websites. She is especially known for her focus on women’s issues.
Tavakolian was born in Tehran in 1981 and began her photojournalism career by working for the magazine Zan (Women) when she was only 16.
She became a photojournalist by accident. “During high school I did not like to study,” she says. “I liked to be active, not to sit in one place. My field of study was humanities but I changed it to arts. Nobody in my family was in arts. My father laughed at me when he learned that I had gone into photography. I tried to change their view... they thought photographers are the ones who roam around Tehran’s Azadi Square and take snapshots of people.”
When asked why she became a photographer, Tavakolian says, “We had a professional camera at home and I settled on photography to spare my family added expenses. I was also very absentminded and photography gave discipline to my life and my work. The camera was so important to me that I wrote a lengthy note and put it in the camera bag so that if I lost my camera, the guy who found it would read the note, take pity on me and bring me back the camera. As it happened, I once left my camera in the car and when I got to school I found out that the person who found it had read the note and had brought the camera to school ahead of me.”
July 1999 was a turning point in Tavakolian’s professional life. When a peaceful demonstration by students turned into days of rioting after a student was killed in Tehran University’s dormitory, she was the youngest photojournalist to record the events; her photographs were circulated widely.
“She had spent a week scaling trees and perching above with a zoom lens, bearing unique witness to an event that is a watershed in Iran’s history,” wrote Azadeh Moaveni in TIME magazine. “She was disarmingly young in those days, girlish and funny in a way that made you forget she had already become one of the most intrepid and influential photojournalists in the country, and of her generation.”
In 2001, at the age of 21 she joined Polaris Images, an independent photo agency in New York. Since then, her photographs have appeared in numerous publications, including TIME, the New York Times, Stern, National Geographic, Le Figaro, Le Monde, Newsweek and Der Spiegel.
Newsha Tavakolian started her international activities by covering the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Besides covering war-torn areas and natural disasters, she produced social documentary stories in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Yemen.
In the violent aftermath of the disputed 2009 presidential election, Tavakolian had to give up photojournalism for a period. The authorities started to hunt down protesters identified through published photographs and, according to Tavakolian, Iranians “developed a phobia toward having their picture taken. They were simply very scared.” She was afraid that she would endanger people by taking their photographs, so she chose to go toward a more artistic form of photography.
“The shift marks a deepening and aesthetic maturing in her work, which has been shown by the British Museum and acquired by modern collections such as London’s Victoria and Albert Museum,” wrote Moaveni. “She says this new approach reflects a turn away from demystifying Iran for the West, and toward a different audience as her interlocutor. She’s no longer moved to capture various forms of hejab or veiling, and sees young Iranians’ vibrant presence on social media as capable of presenting their own voice to the world.”
Tavakolian says her recent work tries to honor this approach. “When we’re stuck on getting the West to understand Iran, our work remains on the surface,” she said. “I want to tell Iranians’ story to Iranians themselves. This is where I can challenge myself and go deeper into the more complicated layers.”
In the past year, Tavakolian traveled to Kobane, the frontline of the war between Kurds and Islamic State, and took arresting photographs of Kurdish women who had joined the fight. In July 2015, she was selected as a nominee member of Magnum Photos, a prestigious international photographic cooperative founded after the Second World War and owned and run by its members. Famous photographers including Henri Cartier-Bresson were among its founding members. It usually accepts only one or two new members each year.
In 2013, Tavakolian won a €50,000 award from the Carmignac Foundation for a collection of 200 of her photographs. “I worked on this project for about six months. The main subject of these photos are young Iranians and their daily lives in Tehran. There are ordinary people whom you might think are not attractive to the camera but I believe if you look more carefully at them you will find there are lot stories in their lives — a young man who works in a small Tehran café or a young teacher who teaches English and rides a bus to get to work.”
Her collection was to be published by the Carmignac Foundation under the title Empty Pages of An Iranian Photo Album, with an exhibition by the same title. When the foundation asked her to change the name of the collection to A Burnt Generation, she refused and returned the award. “I felt that if I accepted the award, my artistic freedom, which is the most important element in my professional life will become questionable.”
With added pressure from other photographers, Carmignac Foundation eventually relented and took back its demand.
Newsha Tavakolian lives in Tehran and is married to Thomas Erdbrink, the New York Times correspondent in Iran.
A day after she received the Prince Claus Award, Newsha Tavakolian announced on her Facebook page that she would donate part of the €100,000 ($112,000) award money to charity, including Syrian and Iraqi refugees. "It is hard for me to enjoy this prize as much as I would like to, seeing the region where I work and live in flames and tens of thousands seeking refuge in faraway lands," she wrote. “ I have worked in both their countries and want to give back to all the kindness Iraqis and Syrians always welcomed me with, despite the dire circumstances they live in.”
Also in the series:
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Jinous Nemat Mahmoudi
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Simin Behbahani
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Forough Farrokhzad
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Parvin Etesami
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Farokhru Parsa
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Jamileh Sadeghi
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Fatemeh Daneshvar
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Fatemeh Moghimi
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Googoosh
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Sima Bina
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Tahereh Qurratu'l-Ayn
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Farah Pahlavi
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Pardis Sabeti
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Mahsa Vahdat
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Maryam Mirzakhani
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Fatemeh Karroubi
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Shirin Ebadi
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Mehrangiz Kar
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Narges Mohammadi
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Zahra Rahnavard
50 Iranian Women You Should Known: Leila Hatami
50 Iranian Women You Should Known: Golshifteh Farahani
50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Susan Taslimi
To read more stories like this, sign up to our weekly email.
Interested in writing for IranWire?
Share your stories.
comments