Until further notice…
Eighteen years ago, the day the Berlin Wall was being torn down some said, “Stop! You are destroying a country’s history.” Parts of the wall were still remaining when suddenly people started to collect wall pieces filled with graffiti and political sketches. Collectors from around the world especially America came to Berlin and bought some of these pieces for a few million dollars. Some sold them to museums and galleries while government officials protected parts of the wall that had not yet been torn down as memorial. Since then, millions of tourists from around the world have visited the remains.
It was in the early post-revolution days when I accidentally ran into Momayez on Ferdowsi Square, which was my usual route. He was holding a small camera and was photographing the walls filled of graffiti about the revolution. He told me he wanted to publish a book of these images calling it the Revolution Handwritings.
Momayez was clever and insightful. He knew what he was doing. And that was thirty years ago. I was thrilled at Momayez’s innovation and told him that it was an interesting work that would last long. He had taken many pictures. Familiar with his patience and precision, I greatly encouraged him. Later on, a book was published of these images that were extremely beautiful and unique. I never saw the book again. Perhaps many didn’t either…
With the onset of the Constitutional Movement, political graphics like many other imported matters such as suits, ties, bow ties and hats, came to Iran. Up until then everything was created in admiration, praise and fawning the kings and despotic lustful and gluttonous rulers.
With the publication of newspapers and magazines, political graphics were also born in Iran. If we turn the pages of newspapers and magazines from back then we will see many of these historical documents. After several years, political graphics in Iran found a new niche in the 1950’s. Certainly, the special circumstances of that period affected this rebirth; the presence of leftist and rightist parties and enthusiasts of political ideologies, the supporters and opponents of the nationalized oil industry, the Shah’s opponents, etc. The walls, posters, advertisements and the press displayed a new face of Iran’s political graphics.
Back then I was a fifth grader at Amir Atabak Elementary School in Ekbatan Street next to the Ministry of Culture and close to Baharestan Square. Many of Iran’s important political events have occurred in this square. One day when I was coming out of school, on the wall across the way, there was a slogan that was said to have been written by Mohammad Masoud, the brave journalist, in his own blood since they had executed him by that same place. There was dried blood on the wall. The writing read, “I gave up my life, wrote with my own blood, either death or Mosadegh.” And everyday people visited that spot. (Mosaddeq was an Iranian political leader and the prime minister of Iran from 1951-1953 who was removed from power by a coup.)
In the 1960’s, with the rise and continuation of the Vietnam War and America’s defeat in the world, a surge of peace seeking movements and demonstrations against the war emerged and on the occasion hundreds of posters were published throughout the world with some reaching Iran. At that time many leftists, Tudeh Party members, communists, Maoists and Leninists were active and found Iran’s intellectual community greatly influenced by them. In other words, being leftist had become fashionable and brought prestige. In the homes of young intellectuals and even the wealthy, the posters that had come to Iran from abroad were seen on the walls in large sizes; posters of Che Guevara, Castro, the Peace Dove, Picasso, the famous poster of ‘Why,’ which showed a shot dead American soldier, posters of John Lennon and his wife, the poster of Make Love Not War, the famous poster in which a flower was put in a rifle’s tube and domestic posters from Iranian intellectuals such as Shamloo, Forough Farrokhzad and Golesorkhi.
During the time of the Shah, Iranian caricaturists were among the first that published their objections and criticisms by way of political graphics despite the presence of SAVAK (Shah’s intelligent service) censorship. The most famous publications that printed political ideas and criticisms included Togfigh, Haji Baba Shamal, Chalangar, Ahangar and Kashkiat which each was closed down several times. Also at that time, the caricaturists produced valuable works on political graphics. Hassan Tofigh, Gholamali Latifi, Sakhavarz, Ardeshir Mohases, Mostafa Ramezani, Nikzad Nojumi and myself are to name a few.
Around the end of the Shah’s time and the victory of the Islamic Revolution, political graphics in Iran also entered a new phase. Religion, people’s religious beliefs and the Islamic Revolution were intertwined with political graphics; an issue that did not exist up to then. In the last months of the Shah’s rule gradually Shariati’s posters (Iranian religious intellectual) appeared on the walls and in the streets, schools, universities and bookstores and posters of Imam Khomeini with over a million in circulation were published and distributed throughout Iran. This was also one of the prodigious changes of those times. Prodigious in the sense that up until that day the extent and circulation of political posters barely reached a thousand.
Of course, amidst all that, other surprising events also occurred. After the Shah left Iran and the Islamic Republic established, a group of graphic designers and caricaturists who deemed to have awakened began to print and publish posters, books, brochures and caricatures with themes of death to the Shah; a Shah that had fled and who had politically died and that death to the Shah was meaningless.
With the occupation of the American embassy, yet another interesting event took place in the realm of Iranian political graphics and it began from the same embassy walls. Paintings and graffiti that revealed people’s objections and rage against America and later on England, and the world hegemonies and the Zionist regime were added. The imposed 8 year-old Iran-Iraq war yielded political graphics in Iran to expand by the day and people’s despise and rage towards Saddam, the Iraqi dictator, was displayed on the walls and posters. The martyrs and the disabled therefore who were among the honors of Iran and Islam and dear to people became permanent icons on the walls, posters and billboards.
What about the Iranian political graphics today? There is none due to the lack of publication of a satirical political-critical-social magazine similar to what we had in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
The red tapes, self-censorship and the closing down of some newspapers because of printing a few caricatures that were misunderstood, or the mistake and ignorance and fear of managers and chief editors of the closing down of their newspaper and unemployment of journalists, dependence of the press on left and right political currents, ridiculous and insulting low wages, low circulation, lack of people’s welcome of the press and many other reasons has brought political graphics to a halt. Unfortunately, I have to say that political graphics at the present is boycotted, abandoned and looks meek and of course closed until further notice.