Pro-Shariatmadari Demonstrations, Tabriz

When photographing the Iranian Revolution and the student takeover of the American embassy in Tehran and the capture of hostages, Gilles Peress sought to convey the chaos of the moment rather than a single coherent narrative, as other photojournalists did. This image of a demonstration supporting the opposition figure Ayatollah Kazem Shariatmadari is a perfect example of his strategy. “I saw contradictions, confrontations between different meanings, different processes, different individual histories, all occurring at the same time,” he has said. “At a practical level, I’ve always tried to break the frame in little, physical ways, to reflect these contradictions.”