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Portfolio: How Did I Get Interested in Photography?

Talat Saberi

Iran, 2007

At first, it was a small photography book by Riccardo Zipoli (Italian Iranologist) on his trip to Iran, which affected me highly. Besides to its beautiful photographs, including old streets, highlights and shadows, playing lights, attendance of the people in the old romantic spaces… its description text on Iran, were all the sceneries coming alive in front of the eye’s readers.

This book was classified in the library of Isfahan Contemporary Arts Museum, which was mostly closed, as there was no librarian. Because of this unforgettable book, I became a voluntary for the library. I read and read the book many times, as well as seeing and seeing its photos.

Later, I knew the world of other photographers from Iran and abroad. Photos by Nasrollah Kasraian from Iranian tribes and nations, his other book “Doors & Windows”, “Ship” were impressed me. He has photographed the small alone “ship”, his silent friend, for 14 years; he has seen his friend for many years, and at last understood that his metallic friend was oxide and carried to the foundry to be melted. This small book id the eternity story of strange friendship.

Then, photos by Jamshi Bayrami, Ernest Holster, Ansel Adams made me excited. Portraits by Maryam Zandi of Iranian Artists and Writers remember us their faces in our agitated era. Hadi Shafaie’s photos and his truthful note on how he has become a photographer, Abbas Kia Rostami’s photos of snowy splendid plains, lonely trees, wolf and fox running and the deep silence of nature in winter, and the photos of Omidvar Brothers of Cannibals, far jungles, Eskimo, primitive tribes and unbelievable strange ceremonies, all made me believe that photo could have a huge effect on human mind and spirit.

It could record the history, civilization, geographic situations and social life in each part of the world, as a book, or like the old paintings in the caves or petrography. Photos are the pictorial documentary history of each nation; the future comers will know the past by these new documents.

At last, CPC/CAPA exhibition in Isfahan Contemporary Arts Museum 2007 made me more interesting to photography: Now, I photograph with pleasure.

It is a long way to learn photography, to learn photography completely, to take valuable photos… to call us a photographer. I’m at the beginning of this beautiful long way.


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