Prints of Persia
When the award-winning austrian photographer Inge Morath visited Iran in 1956 she captured an Antique Land on the Brink of Modernity
“IF YOU DON’T RESPECT WHAT PEOPLE DO YOU SHOULD NOT PHOTOGRAPH THEM.”
Inge Morath’s words serve as worthy advice when snapping Buckingham Palace’s guards, yet this Austrian-born, award-winning photographer’s maxim was markedly more vital during her 1956 trip to Iran. Donning a chador, Morath travelled to Tehran, the Caspian coast, the Alborz mountains and Persepolis, before documenting oil fields along the Iraqi border.
Going beyond the carpets-and-mosques brief issued by the US magazine Holiday, she photographed everyone from breast-feeding nomads through to the Shah and his court. The monochrome images featured here appeared for the first time in the book Inge Morath: Iran, and offer a remarkably intimate portrait of an ancient land on the brink of modernity.
Yet Morath’s work also speaks to her own strident ways, as a strong woman in a man’s world. She first joined world-renowned Parisian picture agency Magnum as a 25-year-old researcher in 1948.
From 1953-54 Morath assisted perhaps the world’s greatest photographer, Henri CartierBresson. A year later she became a full Magnum member; five years after that, Morath met the American playwright Arthur Miller on the set of the Hollywood blockbuster, The Misfits. Miller and Morath were married in 1962, after his split from first wife Marilyn Monroe.
While she never achieved the status enjoyed by Magnum big shots like Robert Capa, Morath’s images possess a remarkable sensitivity, whether focusing on Hollywood greats or Persian opium smokers.
Alex Rayner Inge Morath: Iran, £36, www.steidlville.com
