
Yasser Sepehr’s photo exhibition titled “Desolation History” will be opened on Monday, December 27 at Ostad Nami Gallery.
This photo collection is the result of ten years of photography and research work by Yasser Sepehr. Sepehr, who studied photography at Tehran University of Art, has organized numerous solo and group exhibitions during the last decade.
In the statement of the exhibition of this university professor, it is stated: “In the photo collection “Tarikh Viraneh”, Sepehr shows a city in which there is no sign of prosperity, but perhaps he is looking for hope in this direction, and therefore he sees his works as a messianic and liberating thing. approaches
It’s as if these photos want to tell us that there is no extraordinary state, extraordinary state is something that we experience every day.
The curator of this photo collection is Hadi Momeni.
This exhibition includes 18 photographs of the walls of destroyed houses in different areas of Tehran, which were photographed during the last ten years.
This exhibition will host those interested in visual arts and photography from Monday 27 December to 4 January 1402 from 14:00 to 20:00.
About Yasser Sepehr’s “History of Ruins” photo collection
Hadi Momeni
Today, the city of Tehran has become a city that has become anonymous and memoryless due to the process of commercialization, now it sees its social memory lost. It is as if this city is our collective memory that is buried in a pile of concrete, cement and iron beams.
Yasser Sepehr has found out in the photo series “Tarikh Viraneh” that he cannot be indifferent to the emergency situation that his society and city are caught in.
Therefore, with each photo piece of this collection, it reminds us that every human being has a right to the space in which he lives. With the traces he recorded on the walls and destroyed houses of the city, he whispers in our ears that he should not be just a mourner of a lost city, but in the face of the sad reality of the death of the city we have lived in and have memories with, we should shout the right to the city. He said, this city should be revived and called for a different kind of city.
Sepehr shines the light of day on the gigantic oblivion of the city in the “History of Ruin” photo series. A city that has turned into a practically uncontrollable entity.
In contrast to these works, perhaps we should think about when and how our cities became semi-independent beings that lost their control? And we citizens living in big cities feel helpless against it, we don’t think about it at all, even if we find life in it hard and exhausting, even if we see the biggest inequalities to different groups of us, based on where we live. to impose We still bear it.
We feel proud to have an address, or a roof within the borders of this metropolis, we outdo each other and constantly strive to reach its center. Unaware that this thought that we are always progressing leads to failure.
Even if this city changes all of our existence many times, we accept it; But we do not question it. We only feel more powerless in front of it!
In the words of David Harvey, we should ask ourselves: Has the city made us better beings? Or, on the contrary, has he left us alone in an unknown and alienated world, wrapped in hatred and anger? Have we not turned into tiny atoms that are thrown into the urban ocean every day from left and right?
Eugène Etje took pictures of the empty streets of Paris – the streets where no people can be found – and showed them as crime scenes, streets empty of people. Walter Benjamin writes about this photographer: There is no sign of civilization that is not a document of barbarism, but despite all this, Paris is a city of nostalgia and memories. There are Parisians who have never been anywhere else from the 18th arrondissement in their entire lives, and maybe they don’t even know what’s going on in the 3rd arrondissement. Some Parisians die in the same place where they were born. On the contrary, for us residents of Tehran, this is less possible, or even more precisely, it is impossible. Lovi Strauss lived for one hundred and two years and died in the same house where he was born. In general, the French are masters at keeping memories. On the contrary, we are masters of destroying all good, bad and even historical things.
In the “History of Ruins” collection, the photographer has touched the problem itself. Therefore, his photos are not just a representation of the city, the works are not only aimed at expressing feelings, and only the form cannot be called their main issue. What is important is the expression and execution of the city atmosphere with all its different levels and layers, with its cement and gray face, a city that seems to have lost its memories and is in oblivion. A city with no history, no past and no soul. In a depressed world, the only positive feature is that it invites the audience to roam the city like a flaneur.
Yasser Sepehr narrates/retells/composes the city at the same time in the collection “Tarikh Viraneh”. Sometimes, like a city planner and architect, he narrates the urban space and presents the urban space in an effective combination and a new way of understanding the city, but instead of trying to shape and develop cities through photography, he presents the history of the destruction of the city.
He explains every possibility of the collapse of the city, narrates the urban space, moving in the urban space and understanding the urban space, as a wanderer.
He walks in urban spaces, understands the urban space and composes his own understanding of the urban space by using image recording.
Sepehr Angar shows the Tehran of poverty, the Tehran of loneliness and hardship, the Tehran of people who came to this city with a thousand hopes and are now disappointed.
Benjamin talks about an angel in one of the works in the ninth chapter
Paul Kelly titled “New Angel”. A broken and exhausted angel who still managed to maintain himself. Why? Because the wind blows on him and makes him spin. Everything under the angel’s feet is a ruin and the wind is holding him strongly and carrying him forward. Ruins are still ruins. According to Benjamin’s interpretation of this statement, it can be said that we built the ruins, this is our social life. The angel is that spirituality that should have been our savior, which is now broken and confused. The wind that is blowing is the wind of development. The wind is progress; That is, the ideology of development in history.
Real history is a ruin, but we call it development. This development moves the angel of history forward, but the angel of history looks at the ruins with fear. But not with compassion, not with the look of a savior because his wings are broken. There is no spirituality that is savior. “Development” is the crushing of the saviors.
Even though Sepehr shows a city where there is no sign of prosperity, perhaps he seeks hope from this path and therefore approaches his works to a messianic and liberating matter. It’s as if these photos want to tell us that there is no extraordinary state, the extraordinary state is something that we experience every day.
Source: akkasee.com