Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited with text by Vali Mahlouji.
Located in southwest Tehran, Shahr-e No was the city’s historic red-light district, designated as such since the early 1920s. As part of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Islamic state destroyed the area and displaced some 1,500 sex workers who lived there. The following year, Shahr-e No was completely razed. Photographer Kaveh Golestan (1950–2003) created one of the rare surviving records of this vanished neighborhood through his photographic series The Citadel, comprising 61 photographs produced between 1975 and 1977. The book Re-Creating the Citadel revitalizes the seminal series, recovering the social and spatial experiences associated with the area: its relation to human life, social aesthetics, politics and dynamics, and the relationship between marginal and metropolitan citizenry. It unmasks an early and lesser-studied crime, exposing it as a perpetuation of a state-enforced project of violence against the citizen and history itself.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited by Malu Halasa, Hengameh Golestan. Text by Masoud Benhoud, Hojat Sepahvand.
On April 2, 2003, while on an assignment for the BBC in northern Iraq, the Iranian photographer Kaveh Golestan stepped on a land mine and was killed. A photojournalist since 1972, Golestan had witnessed the recent history of his country like no other and had been a tireless chronicler of its conflicts: he documented eight years of war with Iraq (including Halabjeh in 1988) and the repression of the Kurds in both Iran and Iraq. Of his aims, he once declared, "I want to show you images that will be like a slap in your face to shatter your security," an approach that increased both public awareness and public discomfort, at home and abroad. Golestan photographed for Time magazine and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Islamic revolution. He was also honored with the Robert Capa Gold Medal in 1979 (although, because of Iran’s political climate, he was unable to collect this prize until 1992). A testimony to a courageous achievement, Recording the Truth in Iran collects Golestan’s powerful images for the first time.
Kaveh Golestan: Recording the Truth in Iran 1950-2003