foam magazine #21 / merge
portfolio text
Some Frames for Broomberg and Chanarin by David Evans
When was the 20th Century? Everyone seems to agree that it started with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. But when did it end? 1989, according to historian Eric Hobsbawm, with the opening of the Berlin Wall quickly leading on to the implosion of the Soviet Empire, the winding down of the Cold War, and the global hegemony of the United States.1968, for political theorist Antonio ‘Toni’ Negri, who wishes to emphasize the epochal significance of revolts in Paris and elsewhere that challenged the establishment (including the Old Left) and initiated a new era of radical pluralism. Hobsbawm’s century is short; Negri’s is even shorter; yet a case could also be made for the transition from the 20th to the 21st Century occurring outside of Europe in a year between 1968 and 1989: that is, 1979. The pro-Western Shah of Iran was forced into exile, soon followed by the proclamation of an Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Khomeini. The Iranian Revolution has preoccupied Western leaders and their military advisors ever since. Indeed, after the September attacks of 2001, preoccupation has often slipped into obsession, and the government of Tehran is regularly presented as a sinister hidden hand, encouraging
anti-Western jihad in a vast arc of crisis stretching from Somalia on the Horn of Africa, via the Middle East, to Afghanistan and Pakistan. This turbulent area (predominantly Muslim) has attracted many photographers, including Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. Their recent work has dealt with Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan; their new project Afterlife samples photographs taken in Iran in 1979. In early 2009 they met Iranian photographer Jahangir Razmi in New York. In 1979 he was in Sanandaj, North-West Iran, where he photographed a firing squad executing eleven blindfolded Kurds, accused of various counter-revolutionary offences. The image was globally distributed by United Press International and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1980. The reasons for its success in the West are fairly clear. As art, it has hints of famous paintings by masters like Goya and Manet; as photographic art it encapsulates the influential idea of the decisive moment; and as document, it appears to confirm the opinion – widespread in the West - that revolutionary upheaval inevitably leads to new forms of terror. Prudently, Razmi kept quiet about his responsibility for the famous photograph, and only acknowledged authorship in 2006 after he was contacted by Joshua Prager from the Wall Street Journal. The recent meeting in New York took place in Prager’s home. During this meeting, Razmi revealed that the Pulitzer-prize winning shot was merely one of a number of photographs that he took during the executions, and Broomberg and Chanarin were given permission to work with all of this hitherto unseen material. In short, a scoop! One obvious project could have involved printing the complete sequence, accompanied by written commentary on how neighbouring frames alter our understanding of the famous image, similar to existing scholarship around, say, Migrant Mother (1936) by Dorothea Lange or Fallen Soldier (1936) by Robert Capa. But Broomberg and Chanarin are innovative photographers, not photographic historians. So they have sidestepped the obvious, and have
Iran. August 27, 1979. After a short show-trial, 11 people charged as being ‘counterrevolutionary’ were executed at Sanandaj Airport. Nine of the eleven men in this photo were Kurds. This photo won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980. The recipient was known as ‘anonymous’ until 2006 when Jahangir Razmi told the Wall Street Journal that he had taken it. © Jahangir Razmi, courtesy Magnum Photos
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