Faces of Tehran

The revolution has devoured downtown Tehran. The governmental quarter, built by the old Pahlavi Shah in the 1930s with French and German architects in art déco style, was taken over by the regime of the ayatollahs, but they did not like it, and left it to its fate. The bourgeoisie living here perished, emigrated, or moved to the northern part of the city, to the foot of the mountains, founding there the so-called “Republic of North Tehran”, which markedly differs from the rest of the country. And the old city center was overwhelmed by the millions coming from the countryside in search of luck. In the neighborhood of the National Museum and the Shah Palace, at the ground floor of the ministries, in the lobbies of the former cinemas and theaters, there are spare auto part and hardware shops; the aristocratic-style tea houses work as daytime warming places, and the first floor windows of the palaces of the old bourgeoisie yawn empty, because only their ground floor is used for shops, but nobody lives there any more. The beautiful, colorful, Shiraz-type late 18th and early 19th century tiles are freely drilled and chiseled to serve new functions.


Peyman Hooshamadze, today a classical master of Iranian photography, photographed this world, the new population seeking its place in the old scenery, at the end of the 1990s. In his recent album “100” he publishes a hundred portraits from those years, grouped by scenes. He starts at the old railway station, like the newcomers did, and passes among those who have succeeded as clothiers or retailers, and those who were waiting for their luck or simply killing time in a decaying tea house. But he also notes the remnants of the former civilian world: he whiles a lot of time in Shouka Café, which, exceptionally, was preserved as a haunt for publishers, intellectuals and artists, and also visits the zurkhânân, the traditional gymnasiums.


These faces, photographed by Hooshamadze, are not held at arm’s length, regarding them as “others”, but with a real attention and empathy, are not unknown to us. Similar faces were photographed with similar attention during similar social changes in the 70s and 80s in Hungary by Endre Lábass and Péter Korniss, and by others in other countries of the East. Looking at the Persian faces, we can almost tell their stories, or what they are saying to the photographer.


At the time of these photos, as much time had passed since the revolution as the time of their publication. This means that Hooshamadze was already recording a fragile, but established new world. And also that you can still find this world and these figures in downtown Tehran, in the alleys, eateries and shops. Soon I will write about some such encounters.


Persian tea houses were once the gathering places of wealthy citizens, merchants and officials, and often intellectual workshops. Their former rank is indicated by the surviving furniture, the traditional colored tiles, and the enormous scenes and heroes from the Book of Kings, also modeled in tiles. In the Tehran of the 1990s, however, this is all past. Tea houses are visited by the assistants of the nearby cheap shops and those who have nowhere else to go. At that time, there were still a number of wandering singers with long-necked lutes, the aşiks, who nowadays still sometimes play in the Tehran metro, and who today, in the age of nostalgia for the ancient tea houses, are sometimes hired for night-time performance by one or another revitalized and fashionable tea house.


Morteza Ahmadi: شاطر علی ممد Shater Ali Mammad. The characteristic “rap” of old Tehran from the CD صدای طهرون قدیمی Sedâye Tehrûn-e ghadimi (Sounds of old Tehran, 2012).

To the north of the railway station unfolded Tehran’s red-light district Shahr-e No – about which Kaveh Golestan made a shattering photo series –, and its gate, the Gomrok quarter, Tehran’s jumble sale, the world of old-clothes-men, pimps and fences. The end of the nineties was the last moment it could be photographed – of course, only after proper integration –, because later both districts were swept away by the city administration.

“I was lifting weight in prison when they razed my house.” Ahmad Soltani, 46, from Qorveh, arrived at Tehran 4 days ago, the 43rd time

“I have nine children, all of them Tehranis.” Esmail Elhami, 60, from around Ardabil, illiterate

Today Shouka Café has a reputation and a patina as one of the few old cafés which has lived through the “difficult times”. At the end of the 90s, however, they were just living them through. Playwright Yar-Ali Pourmoghaddam found it as a kind of Noah’s Ark, which provided shelter and company for the editors and artists from near and far. Some of the young faces photographed by Hooshamadze at that time are today influential Persian intellectuals at home or abroad.

Another important community venue to survive the revolution are the zurkhânes, the “strength houses”, the traditional bodybuilding clubs. Their history reaches back to pre-Islamic times, and their rituals and customs evidence Zoroastrian traditions. From the late 19th century on it was particularly fashionable to visit such clubs, either as a wrestler or as a fan of the most prominent athletes. The Islamic regime initially tried to suppress the zurkhânes as a pre-Islamic tradition – it is in this period that these photos were taken in the small strength houses scattered between the railway station and the Shah Park –, but since then they have been incorporated in the official culture, and are again an element of Iranian identity.