AT A GLANCE
- Known for
- The Iranian Revolution of 1978–1980, and long projects on the world’s religions
- Worked in
- Mostly black and white; color in his later work on Hinduism
- Camera
- Leica M rangefinders with 28mm, 35mm and 50mm lenses
- Also
- Member of Magnum Photos from 1981; called himself a “historian of the present”
- Start with
- Allah O Akbar: A Journey Through Militant Islam (Phaidon, 1994)
- Links
Abbas Attar (1944–2018), known simply as Abbas, was an Iranian photographer based in Paris and a member of Magnum Photos. He covered wars and revolutions for six decades, above all the revolution in his own country. Later he spent many years photographing religion and what people do in its name.
The story
In the summer of 1968, a 24-year-old Iranian hitchhiked across the United States, starting from New York. He had just spent four years as a student in England. In New Orleans he stopped for a week and stayed with a group of jazz fans. He could not play an instrument, so at their jam sessions in Preservation Hall he danced. In the streets he made his first photo essay, a portrait of the city. Later, looking at his contact sheets, he found one street scene and stopped. “I instinctively knew that I had become a real photographer,” Abbas wrote.
History had interested him since childhood. He was born in Khash, Iran, in 1944 and grew up partly in Algeria during its war of independence. In Paris he joined the agency Sipa in 1971 and Gamma in 1974. He went to Biafra, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Northern Ireland. In Belfast in 1972, a burning wall came down over a fireman, and Abbas kept shooting. “You just function very fast because events develop very fast,” he said.
In 1978 he was in South Africa. Iran was then an ally of the apartheid government, so an Iranian photographer was welcome. At a police school in Hamanskraal he photographed Colonel S.J. Malan, stiff in front of rows of Black recruits. It became one of the most published pictures of that time.
But the biggest story was at home. From 1978 to 1980 he photographed the revolution in Iran. When a crowd shouted at him to stop, he answered in Farsi: “This is for history!” Then, after a night of executions, he rushed to the morgue and saw four bodies on slabs. He decided that “this revolution is not going to be mine anymore.” He stayed away from Iran for seventeen years. In that time he turned to religion: Islam in 29 countries, then Christianity, animism, Buddhism, Hinduism and, until his death in 2018, Judaism.
All of these were long essays, not single pictures. The habit began on that week in New Orleans. “Those familiar with my work know that when I refer to myself as a photographer I mean to say one who writes with light,” he wrote.
The work
- 1944Born in Khash, Iran
- 1968Hitchhikes across the US; first photo essay, in New Orleans
- 1971Joins Sipa Press in Paris; Gamma follows in 1974
- 1978Photographs the revolution in Iran, until 1980
- 1981Joins Magnum Photos; full member in 1985
- 1994Publishes Allah O Akbar
- 1997Returns to Iran after seventeen years of exile
- 2016Publishes Gods I’ve Seen
- 2018Dies in Paris
Lessons
Think in series. Each picture should be strong on its own, but for Abbas its real value was as part of a larger essay.
Keep working when it is hard. In Belfast and in Tehran he kept photographing while events moved fast around him.
Show the whole truth. Friends told him a picture of a revolutionary mob made the revolution look bad. He published it anyway, because he felt a duty to his viewers.
Try this: photograph one place for a week. Then choose 12 prints and put them in an order that tells a story, the way Abbas made his first essay in New Orleans.
Gear
Leica M rangefinder: four of his black-paint Leica bodies, an M3 and three M4s, were sold at Leitz Photographica Auction. According to the auction house, one M4 was specially built for him with an M3 viewfinder.
Wide-angle lens: in New Orleans in 1968 he used a 28mm lens. Later he wrote that he would probably use a 35mm lens instead, to avoid the slight distortion at the edges.
The same auction lot included Summicron 35mm and 50mm lenses and an Elmarit 28mm lens.
Books
Allah O Akbar: A Journey Through Militant Islam (Phaidon, 1994). The result of seven years of travel, from 1987 to 1994, through 29 countries on four continents, from West Africa to China. The book has 320 pages and more than 300 black-and-white photographs, with Abbas’s own text about his experiences. It shows political events, wars and revolutions, but also daily life and the tensions inside Muslim societies. After 11 September 2001 it got new attention. A paperback reprint followed in 2001. The key book for understanding his work.
Return to Mexico: Journeys Beyond the Mask (W. W. Norton, 1992). Made on nine trips over three years, between 1983 and 1986. Abbas wanted to photograph Mexico the way a novelist writes about a country. The book mixes his photographs with excerpts from his daily journal and has an introduction by the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes. It shows village rituals, the Day of the Dead, weddings and cities changing fast. For readers who like a book that feels like a travel story.
Iran Diary 1971–2002 (Autrement, Paris, 2002). A 239-page book in French, with photographs and texts by Abbas, made as a private journal of thirty years of his country’s history. It has three parts: Revolutions, about the end of the Shah and the revolution; Exiles, about the war with Iraq and the years he could not return; and Returns, about the Iran he found in 1997. For anyone who wants to see the revolution through the eyes of someone who lived it.
Gods I’ve Seen: Travels Among Hindus (Phaidon, 2016). A 224-page hardback with 147 photographs, made over three years in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bali. It looks at ancient rites, magic, animals and daily life, and also at Sikh and Jain groups. Unlike most of his books, it includes color photographs next to black and white. His last big book, and the easiest to find today.
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