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Collections

Ahmad Aali
Tehran, 19791979, printed in 2017

Not on view
Black and white photograph looking steeply upward along the graffiti-covered concrete face of a tall monument tower, with two small figures crouched on the slope and a large stenciled portrait of a bearded man at the base
Artist or Maker
Ahmad Aali
Iran, Tabriz, born 1935
Title
Tehran, 1979
Date Made
1979, printed in 2017
Medium
Inkjet print
Dimensions
Primary support: 40 1/4 × 29 1/8 in. (102.24 × 73.98 cm)
Credit Line
Purchased with funds provided by JoAnn Busuttil
Accession Number
M.2017.247
Classification
Photographs
Collecting Area
Art of the Middle East: Contemporary
Curatorial Notes

Ahmad Aali has been an active force in the Iranian art world since the early 1960s. Best known as a photographer, he succinctly captured Iran’s new post-revolutionary world in this image, which perfectly encapsulates the shattering transfer of power although it is devoid of any outward violence. Here the famed Shahyad (Remembrance of the King) Tower, renamed Burj-i Azadi (Freedom Tower), has been rebranded with the stenciled image of Ayatollah Khomeini.

Selected Bibliography
  • Komaroff, Linda. In the Fields of Empty Days: The Intersection of Past and Present in Iranian Art. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich; New York: DelMonico Books-Prestel, 2018.