Bahman Jalali

Bahman Jalali (1944-2010) was a renowned photographer best known for his portrayal of social issues, photographs of the Islamic Revolution, and the eight-year Iraq-Iran war.

Bahman Jalali was born in Tehran. He studied economics at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science of the National University. After graduating, he began working as a photographer in the late 1960s. Jalali taught photography at various institutions and universities and collaborated momentarily with Ghobad Shiva in Tamasha magazine. Then, in 1975, he went to London to professionally study photography at John Vickers School of Photography. He later became a member of the Royal Photography Society.

Jalali returned to Iran in 1976. In the years before the Islamic Revolution, he exhibited his photographs and published the book "Black African Art" in 1977. The photographs captured by Bahman Jalali during the 64 days prior to the outbreak of the Revolution and during the war are considered as his most significant works. Bahman Jalali's photographs from the Revolution days, along with images of some other photographers, were published in 1979 in the book "Days of Blood, Days of Fire".

Jalali's photographs from the war were published in the photobooks named "Abadan Fights on" in 1981 and "Khorramshahr" in 1982. These collections include images of civilian areas under enemy occupation in the early years of the war. During these years, many people narrated the situation of the country and the social atmosphere of the time in their photographs and paintings. Many of the works of this period expressed revolutionary passion and the enthusiasm for self-sacrifice and martyrdom with propagandistic aspects. On the contrary, Jalali's photographs present a realistic narrative of the most critical and bitter events of the time with a reportage-like approach. Such an approach has made his images an authentic source for recounting what happened in the past even after so many years.

By the end of the war and during the 1990s, the subject of Bahman Jalali's works took a new direction. Unlike his earlier works, he focused on more neglected topics and these works demonstrate a more searching look by the artist. In the collection of the photographs of the 1990s, which began with pre-revolution single images and was pursued more seriously after the war, we can see issues related to the living environment and culture of people in different parts of the country. The series "Iran, Land of Light and Color" (1991) and "Fishermen of the North and South" include photographs taken by Jalali during the years 1971 to 1997 which were published in this decade.

Bahman Jalali is one of the founders of the first photography museum in Iran, namely the City Photo Museum, which was opened in 1997. Also, in 1998, he established the photography quarterly "Aksnameh" in collaboration with Rana Javadi at the Tehran office of Cultural Studies.

Jalali entered a new field in the 2020s utterly different from his documentary approach. During these years, Jalali collected and restored the glass negatives of Golestan Palace. He created the "image of imagination" series based on the glass negatives. This series can be considered as a continuation of the "Flowers" series that Jalali had published in the nineties and had a more non-documentary creative look, in comparison to his documentaries.

In 2007, a show entitled "A Retrospective: Bahman Jalali" was held at Tapies Foundation, Barcelona. Jalali himself considered this show as one of the most important events in his life. Shortly afterward, he won the Sprengel International Prize and the International Spectrum Photography Award in 2011 by the Lower Saxony Foundation. Bahman Jalali passed away in Tehran in 2010 due to illness.

In 2020 and on the tenth anniversary of Jalali's demise, the Silk Road Gallery held an exhibition in commemoration of his several years of artistic activity. Jalali's works have been exhibited in various exhibitions and art fairs, including Photo London and Paris Photo in 2020.