The effects of the United States and Israel’s 12-day war on my country last year were immediately visible in everyday life. Cultural activities stopped, many workplaces closed temporarily, and people became intensely focused on safety and following the news. It was a tense and uncertain time. For me, as a photographer, the consequences were immediate. I had been earning my living mainly through theatre photography, but because theatres and many cultural activities were suspended, my work effectively stopped. For a time, I stayed at home and turned to translating books in order to support myself.
The ongoing war has only increased our difficulties. During the first days of this conflict, major political leaders in Iran were assassinated, and the country entered what many people see as an existential war. In the three weeks since the war began, the economic pressure on my family has become severe. I had already been struggling financially after losing much of my photography work. My daughter and son-in-law, who run a language training center, have also been forced to close their business. Several other members of my extended family have had to leave Tehran temporarily after repeated air strikes on residential areas. They have relocated to a smaller city in eastern Iran for safety.
Because of the security situation, the government has also restricted global internet access, which has shut down many online businesses and created additional economic pressure on parts of society.
I began photography in 1971, when I was a 15-year-old. Until 1977, when I held my first photography exhibition, I relied on cameras borrowed from friends and acquaintances. At that time, photography was not easily accessible for many young people in my environment, which made my fascination with it even stronger.
During a war, when censorship, propaganda, and official narratives often dominate the public space, art in general — and photography in particular — can document the reality of human experience. Images sometimes reveal aspects of reality that official reports either hide or are unable to convey.
Art, and especially photography, can also make human suffering tangible. It can communicate pain, fear, and hope in ways that statistics or news reports often cannot. For this reason, certain photographs become powerful symbols of historical memory.
Artists often challenge dominant or official narratives not through confrontation, but through metaphor, symbolism, irony, or personal storytelling. In this way, art can quietly question power and create space for reflection. But also, in such circumstances, people are primarily concerned with security, food, shelter, and survival. Under these conditions, many may feel that art is not an immediate necessity. Some artists also experience a form of moral exhaustion during wartime. They may feel that art cannot stop violence, and this realisation can lead to a sense of ethical frustration or despair.
For younger photographers who hope to follow a similar path, such conditions make it extremely difficult to develop their work. Economic instability, limited access to equipment, and restrictions on documentation all create serious obstacles for the new generation of visual storytellers.
At the same time, the uncertainty and psychological pressure created by war make it harder for artists to focus on creative work. Many photographers are preoccupied with the safety of their families and their basic livelihoods rather than artistic projects. In a situation where air strikes and bombings occur repeatedly, there is always the risk that a photographer may become a victim of the violence they are trying to document.
However, despite all these pressures and restrictions, there is one striking phenomenon: A strong sense of national solidarity. Many people gather in the streets day and night to express support for those defending the country. The divisions that were often visible in society before the war have, at least for now, largely faded. Many young photographers still feel a strong desire to document what is happening around them, because they understand that these moments — however painful — are also part of the historical memory of a nation.
What many normal people like my family and I are experiencing today is a profound disruption of normal life — a sense that ordinary lives have suddenly been interrupted by forces beyond their control. Many citizens feel that the country was already engaged in negotiations and had made significant compromises to avoid war. For them, the attack created a deep sense of betrayal, injustice، and outrage.
At the time that negotiations were underway, my son — who lives in Germany with his wife and our two grandchildren — invited me to come and stay with them for a while and help with some work related to his company. Because of the severe sanctions imposed by the US and the disruptions that followed the earlier conflict, I had been largely without work and without a stable source of income for quite a while. The opportunity to spend some time with my son and his family seemed like something that might help improve my emotional and psychological state. But only four days after I arrived in Germany, Israel and the US launched their attack on Iran.
When the war began, I felt a deep sense of regret that I was not in my country. Even so, I remain in daily contact with my family and friends in Iran. I have also learned that the residential area where my home is, on the outskirts of Tehran, has been struck 14 times during the bombings carried out by the attacking forces.
As for the future of Iran, my hope is for a country that remains independent and confident in its own capacities — a nation that relies on the talents of its people, its cultural heritage, and its natural resources. At the same time, I hope for an Iran that maintains constructive relations with other nations based on mutual respect, fair economic cooperation, and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.
The existence of a large, independent, and influential country in West Asia is not something that many Western powers feel comfortable with, because it can challenge their strategic interests in the region. When it comes to Israel, from my perspective, it is an artificial state created through political engineering in the region, and it seeks to establish itself as the dominant power in West Asia. A large, independent, and historically rooted country such as Iran naturally becomes a major obstacle to that ambition.
In the Iranian cultural imagination, India is seen as a great civilisation with a profound cultural heritage and a remarkable history of anti-colonial struggle led by extraordinary figures such as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Because of these historical and cultural connections, many Iranians feel a natural sense of affinity toward India. For this reason, it can be surprising and even shocking for many Iranians to see India moving closer to Israel in recent years.
I sometimes find the term “liberate” confusing when it is used in discussions about Iranian women. Liberate them from what exactly? From my perspective, if we want to talk seriously about women’s freedom, we should look at real social indicators and compare women’s situation before and after the revolution.
In terms of education, the transformation has been remarkable. In the mid-1970s, female literacy in Iran was around 35 percent. Today it is above 96 percent. Before the revolution, women made up only a small minority of university students — around three percent. Today, women constitute more than half of university students in Iran, and for many years the figure has been between 50 and 60 percent. In science and engineering fields, the change is even more striking; a large majority of STEM graduates in Iran today are women.
I have also witnessed this change personally. When I entered the architecture faculty of what was then the National University of Iran in 1977, there were about 130 students in my class, and only around 15 of them were women. Many years later, in 2008, I was invited back to give a photography workshop. That year, there were about 120 students in the class — and only about ten of them were men. The overwhelming majority were women. For me, this was a very clear sign of how dramatically society had changed.
Women’s participation in sports has also expanded enormously. Today, Iranian women compete nationally and internationally in many disciplines — from shooting and archery to martial arts, football, mountaineering, and cycling. Iranian female athletes have won medals in major international competitions, including the Olympic Games and world championships. In my view, the level of participation we see today is not even comparable with the limited opportunities that existed before the revolution.
When Western media talk about Iranian women, however, the conversation is usually reduced to a single topic: The hijab. From my perspective, this debate often ignores historical context. Forms of modest dress existed in Iranian civilisation long before Islam and long before the Islamic Republic.
It is also important to remember that in the early 20th century, the Iranian government under the first Pahlavi king tried to do the opposite: It attempted to ban traditional forms of dress and forced women to remove the veil to adopt Western clothing. Many people in Iran experienced this as an attempt to erase a part of their cultural identity. During the revolutionary movement of 1979, many Iranian women themselves chose to wear the chador in demonstrations as a symbol of cultural identity and resistance to what they saw as imposed Westernisation.
To my mind, real freedom for women means dignity, education, health, social participation, and respect for cultural identity — not simply adopting Western cultural norms. Iranian women do not need to be “liberated” by outsiders.
The writer is a photographer
