In Magnified Reflections

The decision to use photographs of the Islamic Revolution was for the purpose of answering these questions within the context of the most crucial event in the contemporary history of Modern Iran. On the other hand, I also wanted to find individuals more concerned with something more important than the Revolution and the protests around them; I wanted to find people who were unsure whether they were doing the right thing by being there. My search for images of the Revolution led me to a number of Iranian photobooks on the subject of the historical event. I wanted to find my “faces” in the crowds using a loupe and place them alongside one another, creating my own crowd within a photobook. This would create a relationship between the Iranian photobooks of the Revolution and my photobook. Therefore, I started looking for people staring at the camera in the crowds.

Photographing through a magnifying loupe and extracting the faces was an allegory of bringing the Revolution to the present. The magnifying loupe acted as a bridge that united me with the revolutionaries of the past. Their gaze seemed to have been waiting decades to catch mine through my lens. They had wanted to be recorded in history by a camera, and I was now trying to reveal their desire. For me, however, this method restaged the efforts of a fellow revolutionary searching for others to unite with within a crowd. An imagined wall separated the photographer from the subject, much like the separation of actors from the audience as defined in The Fourth Wall - an accepted convention in performance art, theatre, and cinema. While the audience can see through this wall, the convention assumes the act of actors as if they cannot.

This time, it seems that the people in the picture intend to break the convention of The Fourth Wall. They ignore their role and stare at the photographer’s lens. They seem to be intoxicated by the 35mm camera or are, for some reason, cautioning the photographer with their gaze.