A look at the exhibition of Yasser Sepehr’s photos, titled “Tarikh Viraneh” curated by Hadi Momeni, at the artist’s house.
“Desolation reveals the truth because it is what remains; The ruin is the continuity of history.” [1]
It is as if they took a giant machete and cut the houses, which were once the mother and shelter of people, with it, and only one wall, the wall at the end of the house, was left. A wall that has traces of stairs, niches, bathroom and kitchen tiles, and the border between floors on it, and this wall, with scars and injuries on it, has become the subject of Yasser Sepehr’s photography.
Ruins, abandoned places and any place that shows the absence of humans activates the imagination. Such places are empty of life, but they still remind us of life. “Distance and absence bear the fingerprints of time, and above all require the imagination to reconstruct the ruins in the mind. It is obvious that in such an image, imaginary ideas prevail over reality.”[2] The staircase, which was once a place for people to pass and pass, has now turned into faded lines on the wall; It is as if the shadows of the residents of the house are still moving on the wall like wandering spirits. The niches with fine plasterwork, in the middle of this ruin, are still intact on the wall, trying to deny the destruction. The tiles that look like the bathroom, this is the most private part of the house, is now a public place in front of everyone. Crude paintings of nature, printed on the pre-heater more than any frame, represent the unfulfilled dream of returning to nature. Details such as the empty keyholes, the hole in the heater pipe, and even the traces of the nails that once carried the signs, make the imagination dream. It doesn’t take long for the semi-absent houses to be replaced by vacant lots – usually for years. Vacant lands, which, according to Rebecca Solnit, “like fallen teeth, give an ugly smile to the streets where we commute.”[3]
Baraneh Emadian, in his book “The History of Decay”, talks about the ruins, which attract the attention of artists as artistic objects. He also mentions Picchersky travelers who had a special way of looking at the ruins; “What these travelers were looking for was not the old buildings, but the remains of these buildings were scattered and worn out.”[4]
In the “Ruined History” photo collection, we are faced with remnants of destroyed buildings that Yasser Sepehr photographed like a pictorial traveler; A collection that is the result of the artist’s ten years of wandering in the city. It is as if the artist-photographer, like a collector, scours the city in search of the remnants left from the destruction and destruction of the city to collect an archive for the history of the ruins of his habitat, Tehran. For Sepehr, the photo serves as a reminder to create an image identity of a city that is changing at a dizzying speed and is always prematurely destroyed. But here the concept of ruin has a clear difference from the ruin that we are faced with in the original pictorial sense. Here, there is no news of the decline of civilization, nor is it nature and natural affairs that turn the ruin into something noble and magnificent, but this ruin, according to Ruskin, the theorist who addressed it for the first time, makes the audience think of the ugliness and inferiority of the result. It draws from urbanism that the sentimental artistic view of nature tries to hide. From this point of view, this walk among the ruins is not a pleasure-seeking romantic walk; Restoring the city’s decaying identity.
Destruction of buildings that can still house generations of descendants for many years, distorting and destroying the visual identity of a city that simultaneously destroys the collective memory of generations, shows a critical view rather than a nostalgic burden. Destruction is done under the pretext of construction, but in fact, “this form of construction smells of destruction and destruction more than ever. It is as if the new buildings were built only to be destroyed a decade later.” [5]
“Genuine picturesque has a social nature and does not run away from the effects of poverty, deprivation and destruction endured by humans, and even behind a ruined building, one sees the image of an aged and ruined human being.” There is no sign of old age. It is as if these houses were not depreciated enough to deserve this destruction, nor was nature working to return them to the cycle of decay, but we are faced with buildings that are still standing and were destroyed prematurely; The image that in the humanist view is similar to the human image of youth death, a young man who was killed at the peak of his youth and stability, much earlier than the time of natural death.
PS:
1- Rot, Yosef, (1402), Asian, translated by Sina Darvish Omran and Keyvan Ghafari, Tehran: Bidgol publishing
2- Emadian, Baraneh (1400), natural history of decay, Tehran: Bidgol publishing
3- Solint, Rebecca, (1402), maps for getting lost, translated by Nima M. Ashrafi, Tehran: Parthish Publishing.
4- Emadian, Baraneh (1400), natural history of decay, Tehran: Bidgol publishing
5- The same
5- The same
Autor: Azade Maleki
Source: Poshtebammag.ir