Ghostly Streets of Tehran: The Visual Culture of the Contemporary Iranian Everyday Street

In this presentation I will look at the everyday streets of Tehran through the lens of photography. Street photography is taken as the object of analysis particularly because of the central position it occupies in the analyses of everyday life on the street in a range of urban studies. On the one hand, street photography provides an invaluable resource for historical and social analyses of urban conditions and societies. On the other hand, however, street photography has been extremely instrumental in shaping our vision and understanding of the street, particularly the quotidian street. In other words, one must not forget that what is called the everyday street is itself a cultural construct, shaped by particular ideas, visions and interpretations of the street and life in public. Therefore, by closely analysing the streets of Tehran in the work of a number of contemporary artists and photographers, my aim in this presentation is to explore the social interactions and cultural formations that are at work in the constitution of such images. In my reading of visual media concerning the streets of Tehran I detect two complimentary procedures at work: an emphatic removal of bodies in public conjoined with an over-exposure of urban walls. The ghostly existence of bodies and the assertive presence of urban forms produce the effects of an urban life that is cold, alienating, stifling and threatening. Interestingly, such aesthetics is discernable in the work of artist who, attempting to photograph the ‘everyday’, make use of the digital and cell phone photography as a form of ‘practice’ that best suits the everyday. Manifest in these photographs is the absence of colourful, light, happy, overcrowded, smiley and lively images that the mobile phone is commonly used to produce. In contemplating on the driving force behind the vision of the street that is presented in such images, I will introduce the problematic of visibility. By thinking through my case studies and reflecting on the social and cultural conditions to which they speak, I will subsequently pose the question what could be said about everyday life on the streets in Tehran through this particular visual culture.