[Music]
Hi everybody, welcome to the rest of history. It's Dominic here and I'm thrilled to be unveiling our latest exclusive mini series for our rest is history club members. We will be plunging into the history of photography and in particular what photography tells us about history. I'm joined by my friend the great portrait photographer Chris Floyd who is going to be talking us through some particular historical moments. So we'll be looking at revolutions, the Arab
spring, the Prague spring, the revolution Romanian in 1989. We'll be talking about music. So the blues, David Bowie and so on, we'll be looking at fashion and the role that photography has played
in the transformation of fashion and finally we'll be talking about technology. How technology
has changed photography and how photography has in turn affected the way the we see history. So this is a brilliant series. It's a lot of fun. We would love as many people as possible to join up and to see this series with me and Chris talking about some of the most iconic images in recent history. And in this first episode we are looking at revolutions and here is a lovely little clip. [Music]
Iran. Great. We're back to Iran again. Yeah so 1979. So what I've really tried to do with these is give you, if you're interested in this subject, who is the photographer that best defines that subject? Great. And I've picked one photographer for each of the four revolutions that we're we're going to cover here. So Iran, 1979, that the person you really want to look at is a man called where he was known by a singular name Abbas. Right. His full name was Abbas Atar but he's known
professionally as Abbas. He's born in 1944. I mean really his life's work really was documenting the effect of religion on people. Yeah it's not interesting. So he's Iranian himself. Right. He was born in Iran but he left Iran and then he was he grew up in Algeria and then he returned to Iran during. I mean he lived most of his life in Paris and after he documented the sort of 1979 and 80. Yeah. Iranian Revolution he really was exiled really. He didn't go back to Iran until
“I think 1997 was okay. But 7980 he really was he seemed to be, he seemed to be everywhere. I mean we've”
got five pictures of his here. He seemed to be everywhere and covering everything, which you know for a huge country like your geographical, you know, a physical huge country like Iran is quite
something. So this is the Iatala. He's second from right. Yes. And he is calling upon Iatala Sharia
to Madari to appease tensions between their respective followers. That is as much as I know about this. Okay. You know I'm really picking pictures that really convey the tension and drama of it. So this is how many years have been back for just under a year and actually I suppose that the fat of the hotel in that story is a reminder that actually for the first, oh actually for years, for about the first two or three years the Revolution of Revolution is in complete flux.
Nobody knows that necessarily the harmony is going to win and what role he's going to play in the new regime. Yeah. And there are other power brokers, I guess other Iatollas. I mean it's similar in a way to the Russian Revolution isn't it? And all those factions after the 1917. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not a little down. It's obvious to us now looking back that we impose a patio
at that we think, okay, these guys are obviously always going to win. But nobody knows this at the
time and there are different Islamic groups, there are different groups of Majahidine kind of fighting
“for the streets and whatnot. And how does the fact that a bass is in the room?”
Yeah, that's the astonishing thing. But he's in the room because he's in the room here and then at some point, I mean that's six months later that he's out in the desert with this, you know, when the US tries to rescue the hostages which will come to an a minute. But he's all over the place, you know, he's obviously really well connected and fed with information. You know, how he got into that room, I don't I have no idea. But the fact that they let him in and they also, you know,
he was able to photograph not only photograph this, but also he got out and he got the film out, you know, that this is so much of this, these revolution pictures are about people who have to smuggle film. Yeah. Not only out of a room, but out of a country. Yeah, you know, but in his case it's surely makes a massive difference that he's Iranian, that he's born in Iran and that he's a Muslim. Yeah. So he's that he has, you know, two cards to play with the regime, I guess,
that a Western photographer would not have yet. But he obviously, he didn't, he didn't term in deer himself to the, to the Hamani regime after that because, you know, by he, he was exiled and
“went to live in Paris for 17 years. So should we look at some of the other photos he took?”
So we did, um, operation, uh, that's the operation and the desert operation he will claw, eagle claw, uh, Colonel Charlie Beckworth and his attempt to rescue the hostages, um,
Adulter force.
And actually, I hadn't seen this until you showed it to me. No, it's not terribly well known. So he went out to the desert and it really is, you know, no way, you look at Google Maps and took a photograph of the wreckage of the, uh, of the helicopter. I guess it's an image of humiliation for the United States. Yeah, it is, isn't it? For the Americans, yeah, it's absolutely about the humiliation. I mean, it just, best low plans. Yeah. So, and just as an image,
it's the image of the crash wreckage against the emptiness, I guess, if the desert and the huge wide horizon. But I wonder if they came, because there's not a lot of the help, the actual body of the helicopter, though, do you think they would have come? They,
they, they came back and destroyed, because the Americans, we've got, we've always got technology
that's, uh, better than everybody else. Oh, no, they didn't go back. They didn't go back. No, they didn't go back. Um, they just, I mean, that's the amazing thing. They abandoned the stuff, but also in the helicopter. Yeah. Were the plans of the mission, right? And the Iranians were able to get the kind of charred fragments of paper and exhibit them to the world. Oh, I didn't know that. That bit, I didn't know. So, yeah, I mean, it could not have been a
greater catastrophe. And then you've got another image from the U.S. Embassy, how many where the, I mean, one of the judges are being, are being kept? Uh, yeah, this is more been front of the embassy researching this and looking at a lot of revolutions, pictures, one of the themes that
comes up again and again and again is mobs. Yeah. And after a while of looking at this, I realized
that one mob is kind of pretty much the same as any other mob. Yeah. Um, the thing about the mob, by that, that becomes the image for the, setting for the Americans of the Iranian Revolution. I think the reason that the Iranian Revolution had such an impact on U.S. domestic opinion was the otherness of it. Yeah. So it's member beards. You know, we've got the forbidding looking priests into the clerics in the photo with the idolers. And then this picture, it's the sort of
friends of it that I think for people, you know, if you're sitting in Wisconsin, watching on TV or
“something or opening on newspaper, that's what people found and said, yeah, because they didn't”
appreciate that the, I guess the strength of feeling the fervor against the Shah, but also the
religious dimension that our bass was, um, specialized them. But how did the idolah, how was it possible
for you to enable this kind of, to channel this, this rate? Because one of the things you read a lot about is how, you know, Iranians are Persians. Yeah. They're not Arabs. Yeah. How was the able to kind of take this, find this, this sort of Islamic fervor within the country that it's Persian and not? Well, I think, um, their particular brand of Islam. So she's the fact that they're embattled and they're surrounded by sun is, is obviously very important to explaining Iranian mentality.
And it's, it's where I think religion and nationalism kind of fuse. Yeah. These protests, these enormous street demonstrations have been going, while he was an exile. So they've been building and building every 40 days and 1978 with the funeral of the last people who'd been shot, then there would be another 40 days later, huge crowds on the streets, the Shah's secret police would shoot some more people. Yeah. And then in the 40 days later there will be another set of
“funerals and another of these enormous sort of outpouring of rage. And I think some of the energy”
to me comes from the, the contrast between these people who are so fired up and so, um, the such passion and such a sort of loss of control in a way. And then that is being focused through somebody who's the incarnation of austerity and control. Yeah. You know, the hydraulic, when how many returns at the beginning of 1979, and he says famously on the plane to Peter Jennings, this is coming in. Peter Jennings says, "What do you feel?" Or do you feelings, and he says,
"I feel nothing." And there's something about the sort of the coldness, the self-control, then in a weird way, it will make some kind of other world league. Yeah. It makes them seem holy. And I think that almost the fact that he's not giving into the same passions that they are, it makes him in even greater focus for excitement. People do view him as a kind of holy man. Yeah. And as, um, and as the emblem of a kind of unchanging, authentic Iran that the Shah had
betrayed, I guess, the Shah was to Western and the Shah was corrupt and all these kinds of things. And so people projected all of this onto the sort of what it appears to be the kind of blank slate of
“harmony. Yeah. And then he was, you know, I think it's underappreciated how pragmatic, how calculating,”
how cold blooded he was in kind of using that tapping it, eliminating his rivals and building his blood. Because the other thing you also get from this is that it takes actually quite a small in a population, it takes quite a small percentage of people. Yeah. If they are, if they are fervent enough, yeah, and motivated enough, you know, it's like if you look at politics in Western Europe now, it's really a very small number of people that passionate enough to really want to
join a political party these days. Yeah, of course. And it's that thing, if you have a small number of people who are committed and willing to go all the way, you can do a lot of, of course,
You can do a lot.
talking about millions of people sometimes on the streets. I mean, it really is, um, I think you tap something, it's not just about a small group of extremists and he taps something, a sense that, you know, the country had changed so much in the previous 10 years, a thing spiraling out of control, and people yearned for a kind of reassurance, traditional, they sort of traditional values, uh, sense of solidarity, all of those kinds of things, they felt
that he and his, um, sort of faction offered. What about the last filter that you've got of a
“bass? Because he's armed mullers marching past the I told his house. I think what I like about it”
is that there are lots of photos taking the really revolution. I mean, photographers are always
drawn to the women in their kind of black cloaks and, um, their hadores. I mean, so much of the sort of the imagery of that was really unsettling to Westerners because they saw it as part of the, um, oppression of women, want to understandably. But it's interesting how prominent women are, no, in these photos. Yeah, a bass has a lot of great pictures of Iranian women, yeah, you know, all dressed more often than not like that. There's a very, there's a great picture we took of them
doing target presence. Yeah, with the guns. Yeah, yeah. I think what's unsettling about it is the display of austerity, visual austerity, isn't it? I mean, everything about that picture represents a form of austerity, doesn't it? Nobody's smiling, everybody's grim-faced. Yeah, can I just want to more question about the bass and his photographs, the Iranian Revolution? How important is it
“do you think that they are black and white? It's the black and white images that seem to linger in”
the mind. I mean, yeah, because it's because they are, it's essentially that their monotonal scenes, you know, that's people in black, yeah, and white, and there's very little color there, you know, if you look at the color one, I mean, there's almost no actual color. I mean, there's a tiny flash of blue. Yeah, yeah, everyone has a black. And that's it. Everyone else is in black. Can I just ask you a quick question before we move on to the next revolution? So, the tension
between black and white and color and photography. By and large, why is it that a photographer now would choose black and white? Because of it, so many of the photographs that we're going to be looking at are black and white, and they're taken in an age when color was possible. Yeah, so why do photographers? What is the combination of practical things? One, which was you could process and print black and white film much more easily, right, in a hotel room bathroom. Okay,
build a dark room in a hotel room bathroom, and process and print color is much, much, much more difficult to do. And then also, you know, you have things like newspapers, of the time, you know, apart from you, of things like time, magazine and life magazine, you know, most newspapers, then print, didn't really print color. No, I mean, to today, 1986, I was the first, first, British newspaper, you know, so until then there was actually no need for it, you know, if you're
dealing with, if you're supplying hard news, which is fundamentally what a lot of this is,
yeah, there's no mark, there's no mark it for it's game. One other question, which is a never
occurred to me before until you were just talking. So, some of the little bastards go to Iran, some of these photos, or indeed, the people are going to be in arm or whatever. Then never doing this really with a book in mind, particularly, they're thinking about short-term clients. As in, I will sell these to the time magazine or the Washington Post, or whatever. That's the plan, and if the book does come of that, that's an accident that comes later, but the point is that
the sort of the short term. I've done some of these people were probably much more focused on documenting things because they felt that they needed to be documented. They were driven by, not necessarily driven by the daily, okay, grind of supplying an image to the paper. I think a bass is someone who was drawn to religious projects, he's held away, he was drawn to religious projects, I mean he did projects on Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism. I mean, he's a seven-year
project on militant Islam, on Jisari on Jihadism, after 9/11, he spent seven years' documents around 16 countries. Yeah, wow. Except becomes a sort of passion project, it's much as anything, and almost probably quite addictive that you see after another conflict or you see, because there's
always more to do, isn't there? Thank you for listening, or watching, if you were, indeed,
“watching, now, if you want to see the rest of that episode and the other episodes that are coming”
in this tremendous series in the next three weeks, then all you need to do is to head to the restisistry.com and sign up to join the club. I not only will you get this terrific series with me and Chris Floyd, you will get the host of unbelievable benefits. Now, Chris and I will back next week to talk about photography and music, so make sure you come back for that and don't miss out. And on that, boom, chill. Bye-bye.
