Film and Photography — Art Aesthetics Magazine

Anyone remotely familiar with Iran and its culture will know that poetry is an important element of its national identity. The country prides itself on its unique and rich literary history; poetry is woven into everyday life, with quotes from classical poems appearing in casual conversations, fortune telling, and as advice. Many Iranians ¾ from taxi drivers to the founder of the Islamic republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini ¾ write their own poetry, and it is not uncommon for Iranian politicians to reference literary masters in their speeches. And, for a long time, poetry was one of Iran’s main cultural exports.

Yet, in recent years, film directors have replaced poets as ambassadors of Iranian culture abroad. The work of directors such as the late Abbas Kiarostami, and, following his death, his former student Jafar Panahi, continues to carry a love for Iran’s literary heritage into the 21st century. Iran has produced a plethora of internationally acclaimed directors since the 1960s, whose style of filmmaking, known as Iranian New Wavecinema, is deeply inspired by Iranian poetry. As the author Bill Greenwell supplies, “Good poetry takes the familiar, makes it strange, and makes even the mundane memorable”, and this seems to be the primary concern of Iranian film makers. Their efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. In recent years especially, Western audiences have taken note of the extraordinary quality of Iranian films, and they have come to be a staple at international film festival, regularly winning accolades.

While there are an abundance of Iranian directors, few have made more of a name for themselves than Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi. In true Iranian fashion, neither man is just a director, both are polymaths that use multiple mediums for their creative output.

Kiarostami is most famous for his 1987 film Where Is The Friend’s Home?, which catapulted him into the international spotlight and is widely considered a masterpiece. The praise this movie received in the West is reminiscent of poetry of the past, when Wolfgang Goethe and Ralph Waldo Emerson were inspired by literary greats like Hafez and Rumi. Now today, director Werner Herzog shows Where is the Friend’s Home? to his film students.

In addition to making films, Kiarostami is also a poet who has published multiple volumes, as well as being a prolific photographer, and a painter. Across these mediums, his work is deeply influenced by the poetic spirit and a fascination with the mundane. Oblique and overt references can be found in his films, which frequently recall his literary heritage in titles, dialogue, and themes.

One such recurring motif are the mostada‘fin, or downtrodden, the poorest class of Iranian society, who are usually portrayed by non-professional actors. Fittingly, most movies are a slice of life, dramatizing little; favouring realism, they’re usually shot on site in characteristically long takes. While this makes the films almost mundane in terms of plot, artists like Kiarostami use this banality as the canvas for their real message: slow down and witness the beauty in everyday life. Both his photography and his films are an homage to his Iran and its people respectively, asking the viewer to appreciate both the unique and universal in rural Iranian life.

Photographs such as the above untitled piece are characteristic of Kiarostami’s work. Most of us would probably have passed the dark corner without so much as a second, or even first glace. But not Kiarostami. His expert eye was caught by the sliver of blue light falling through the window, that illuminates an otherwise unremarkable concrete wall. It is because the picture has no obvious subject that we’re drawn to study it, to try and figure out what Kiarostami saw that was worth photographing. The longer one looks at it, the more details can be see: the writing in the little nook in the wall; the bottle that the light hits just-so; the cracks in the wall that form an intricate ivy-like pattern. And the more we see, the more we understand why Kiarostami took this picture. These photographs, these snapshots of unremarkable moments, document the transient beauty of our lives; each is a memory that would have been forgotten if not recorded.

Thus, Kiarostami’s art is an indirect challenge to the viewer. It seems to tell us that if he can spot this beauty in everyday situations, we should attempt the same. By taking pictures such as this one, Kiarostami asks why something need to be extraordinary to be worth remembering? Why don’t we remember the mundane moments and days as much as we remember the special ones? Aren’t they the majority of our life?”

Since Kiarostami’s death in 2016, this poetic approach to art lives on with his former student Jafar Panahi. Like his mentor’s, Panahi’s art focuses on everyday situations. While Kiarostami’s work is poetic in its form and purpose, Panahi more overtly borrows concepts from Iranian poetry.

The photograph 11, from the fittingly named Soil series, is one such example. For a Western audience, soil might seem like a mundane concept but Iranian artists of many schools have taken inspiration from it. The thirteenth century poet Rumi, for example, wrote:

“Oh! joy for this soul and this heart who have escaped

the earth of water and clay,

Although this water and this clay contain the hearth of the

philosophical stone.”

The poem celebrates those who transcend a physical existence, signified by the water and clay, to reach profound understanding. But Rumi simultaneously notes that the tools to do so and, “the hearth/ of the philosophical stone” are found in our earthly existence. The poem also recalls how many religions portray the creation of man as formed from clay. The Soil series thematises this creation by covering its subjects in clay, reminding the viewer of man’s humble beginnings on earth, but also of the fact that he is tied to all of creation. Here soil and water, though unremarkable by themselves, are changed through their union, becoming malleable, mouldable. Elsewhere in the series, the photographs feature fire in the background, alluding to the transformative quality of firing ceramics and a strengthening of the clay.

From quotidian building material to the origin of man, clay has taken on a vast cultural significance. It is considered so important in fact, that the most common way to describe a woman as beautiful is by calling her “khoshgel” (خوشگل), or of “good clay”. Covering the subjects of the photographs in clay simultaneously alludes to their creation from it and enhanced them as they quite literally become “good clay” and thus beautiful.

At the same time, the clay serves as a metaphor for the subjects of the picture, who are salt-of-the-earth people rather than models or even prominent citizens. Rather than expensive clothing, they need only simple earth to transforming them from ordinary citizens into works of art. Panahi’s art shares Kiarostami’s desire to elevate the everyday and turn it into works of art.

Both artists seem to perceive themselves as observers, chronicling their surroundings and only minimally interfere to enhance their meaning. Their films strive to maintain the same authenticity their photographs have. Films and photographs alike eschew professional models or actors in favour of ‘civilians’, whose names are usually not even given. Rather than elaborate plots with dramatic twists of Hollywood blockbusters, Iranian movies are stripped back to the essentials. They usually only have few characters experiencing situations the audience is familiar with and thus reminding us that not everything worth celebrating has to be extraordinary.

Take, for example, one of Panahi’s most recent movies, Taxi Tehran, shot entirely inside the eponymous car. With no actual plot, it shows Panahi driving around the Iranian capital Tehran, with guests getting on and off. The narratives only last as long as passengers are in the car and there is no big reveal tying them all together in the end. In an age where many movies feel like they are racing towards some sort of climax, and a neat resolution where every lose end is neatly resolved, these films are a stark contrast. The prevalence of a three-act structure in most films, with a setup, confrontation and resolution, allows for a cathartic ending, which tends to be the most memorable and enjoyable aspect of a given movie. For Panahi and Kiarostami, on the other hand, it is the journey that matters the most. They eschew a simple satisfying ending, leaving the viewer with as more questions than answers. It is the very absence of action-filled plots that leave you searching for meaning long after the end credits. Unlike action-packed movies that keep the audience at the edges of their seats, Panahi and Kiarostami remind it to lean back and enjoy the ride.

While this can be frustrating to watch, the results are harrowingly real. Because the films sometimes don’t appear professionally shot, they feel much more personal, as if the viewer is accompanying the directors in their day-to-day life but sees everything through their eyes. In this way, their photography and films both invite you to adopt their perspective for a brief period of time. But they do not offer us an escape from our everyday lives, but an appreciation of the beauty that already surrounding us.

Inhabiting the worlds of deeply reflective artists like Panahi and Kiarostami invites us to reflect on ourselves. Their art lingers on the everyday, showing us the poetry in the unnoticed beauty of our lives. Using concepts and motifs from Iran literary history, their art makes the familiar strange, and the mundane memorable. To me, that is the very definition of good art: an invitation to reconsider what we held as a given, and to revaluate the way we see our own lives.