The Ruins that Talk: Bahman Jalāli’s Iran-Iraq War Photobooks in the 1980s

During the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 photographic images were prolifically reproduced in various mediums in Iran. While earlier studies have examined how individual images were appropriated in graphic arts to further the propagandist program of the Iranian regime during the war, the pivotal role of photobooks in shaping Iranian visual culture has been rather neglected in scholarship. Several photobooks were published during the war, by both governmental and private publishers, whose selection of photos, particular arrangement, and design, constructed highly influential visual narratives of the war. My paper examines two privately produced photobooks, Ābādān fights on (1981) and Khorramshahr; 4^thof Khordād 1361 (1982), by Iranian photographer Bahman Jalāli (1944-2010). Both were published in the early years of the war but were soon banned from republishing. I analyze the content and selection of photographs in these two photobooks to argue that they reveal an alternative interpretive space for narrating the Iran-Iraq war for the Iranian nation that lies beyond the official materials which are better known in the west. As I will show through a visual and historical analysis, Jalāli utilizes the narrative potential of the medium to offer an aesthetic of war that is both nuanced and indirect. His photographic narrative takes shape through clustering compositionally outstanding landscapes of destroyed cities and displaced civilians. His compositions, intentionally devoid of human presence, strategically oppose the emphasis put on the representation of heroic corporality seen in other photobooks produced during the 1980s in Iran, particularly those produced by the state.