Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T02:14:26.888Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Persia through the Lens: Poetics and Politics of Architectural Photographs in Pahlavi Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Yuka Kadoi
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Having been introduced to the scholarly community and the general public through a variety of photographic presentations during the inter-war period, monuments in Iran, particularly those of pre-modern Islamic periods, became key buildings to be seized upon as the ultimate embodiment of Persian beauty. The lasting image of Persian Islamic architecture that was articulated through photographs continues not only to set an important benchmark for the understanding of the aesthetic and political matrix of the early twentieth century but also to provoke a methodological question as to the future of Persian architectural studies.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 6: Visualizing Iran: From Antiquity to the Present , November 2017 , pp. 873 - 893
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2017

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The author is grateful to Ali Gheissari, Ranin Kazemi and Samad Alavi who guided this article through production. Thanks are also due to Sheila Blair and Judith Lerner for their help and advice.

References

American Institute for Persian Art and Archaeology. Exhibition of Photographs of Persian Islamic Architecture, 1934.Google Scholar
Bazl, Farajollah. “Personal Reminiscences.” In Surveyors of Persian Art: A Documentary Biography of Arthur Upham Pope and Phillis Ackerman, edited by Gluck, Jay and Siver, Noël, 7–14. Ashiya: SoPA, 1996.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Art in Modern Culture: An Anthology of Critical Texts, edited by Frascina, Francis and Harris, Jonathan, 297–307. London: Phaidon, 1992.Google Scholar
Blessing, Patricia. “From the Survey of Persian Art to the CIA: Donald N. Wilber and Ilkhanid Architecture in Iran.” In The Historiography of Persian Architecture, edited by Gharipour, Mohammad, 112–146. London: Routledge, 2016.Google Scholar
Brusius, Mirjam. “The Wilkinson Album.” In La Persia Qajar 1848–1864: Fotografi Italiani in Iran 1848–1864, edited by Sonetti, Maria Francesca and Prandi, Alberto, 178–179. Rome: Peliti Associati, 2010.Google Scholar
Bulletin of the American Institute for Persian Art and Archaeology. “The Photographic Survey of Persian Islamic Architecture, Part 1.” Bulletin of the American Institute for Persian Art and Archaeology 3, no. 7 (1934): 21–35.Google Scholar
Byron, Robert. The Road to Oxiana. London: Macmillan, 1937; reprint, London: Penguin, 1992.Google Scholar
Creswell, K. A. C. “Persian Architecture.” Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects 38, no. 8 (1931): 250–257.Google Scholar
Elwall, Robert. Building with Light: The International History of Architectural Photography. London: Merrell, 2004.Google Scholar
Devos, Bianca. “Engineering a Modern Society? Adoptions of New Technologies in Early Pahlavi Iran.” In Culture and Cultural Politics Under Reza Shah: The Pahlavi State, New Bourgeoisie and the Creation of a Modern Society in Iran, edited by Devos, Bianca and Werner, Christoph, 266–287. London: Routledge, 2014.Google Scholar
Galdieri, Eugenio, and Afsar, Keramat-Allah, “Conservation and Restoration of Persian Monuments.” Encyclopaedia Iranica. Accessed December 28, 2015. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/conservation-and-restoration-of-persian-monumentsGoogle Scholar
Gluck, Jay, and Siver, Noël, eds. Surveyors of Persian Art: A Documentary Biography of Arthur Upham Pope and Phillis Ackerman. Ashiya: SoPA, 1996.Google Scholar
Grigor, Talinn. Building Iran: Modernism, Architecture, and National Heritage under the Pahlavi Monarchs. New York: Periscope Publishing, 2009.Google Scholar
Grigor, Talinn. “Gendered Politics of Persian Art: Pope and his Partner.” In Arthur Upham Pope and a New Survey of Persian Art, edited by Kadoi, Yuka, 47–73. Leiden, Brill, 2016.Google Scholar
Hejazi, Mehrdad, and Saradj, Fatemeh Mehdizadeh, eds. Persian Architectural Heritage: Conservation. Boston: WIT Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Holod, Renata. “The Monuments of Yazd, 1300–1450: Architecture, Patronage and Setting.” PhD diss., Harvard University, 1972.Google Scholar
Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects. “Exhibition of Photographs of Persian Architecture.” Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects 43, no. 16 (1936): 864–866.Google Scholar
Kadoi, Yuka. “Aspects of Frescoes in 14th-century Iranian Architecture: The Case of Yazd.” Iran 43 (2005): 217–240. doi: 10.2307/4300690CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kadoi, Yuka. Islamic Chinoiserie: The Art of Mongol Iran. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Kadoi, Yuka. “The Myth-making of the Masjid-i Jami‘ of Isfahan: Arthur Upham Pope, Architectural Photographs, and the Persian-Gothic Thesis in the 1930s.” In The Historiography of Persian Architecture, edited by Gharipour, Mohammad, 80–111. London: Routledge, 2016.Google Scholar
Kadoi, Yuka, ed. Arthur Upham Pope and a New Survey of Persian Art. Leiden: Brill, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kadoi, Yuka, and Szántó, Iván, “Why Persian Art Needs to be Studied and Collected.” In The Shaping of Persian Art: Collections and Interpretations of the Art of Islamic Iran and Central Asia, edited by Kadoi, Yuka and Szántó, Iván, 2–28. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.Google Scholar
Kröger, Jens. “Flury, Samuel.” Encyclopaedia Iranica X, Fasc. 1 (1999): 65–66.Google Scholar
Kröger, Jens. “Ernst Herzfeld and Friedrich Sarre.” In Ernst Herzfeld and the Development of Near Eastern Studies, 1900–1950, edited by Gunter, Ann C. and Hauser, Stefan R., 45–99. Leiden: Brill, 2005.Google Scholar
O’Kane, Bernard. “Monumentality in Mamluk and Mongol Art and Architecture.” Art History 19, no. 4 (1996): 499–522. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8365.1996.tb00683.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Overton, Keelan. “From Pahlavi Isfahan to Pacific Shangri La: Reviving, Restoring, and Reinventing Safavid Aesthetics, ca. 1920–40.” West 86th 19, no. 1 (2012): 61–87.Google Scholar
Overton, Keelan. “Filming, Photographing and Purveying in ‘the New Iran’: The Legacy of Stephen H. Nyman, ca. 1937–42.” In Arthur Upham Pope and a New Survey of Persian Art, edited by Kadoi, Yuka, 327–370. Leiden: Brill, 2016.Google Scholar
Paskaleva, Elena. “Ideology in Brick and Tile: Timurid Architecture of the 21st Century.” Central Asian Survey 34, no. 4 (2015): 418–439. doi: 10.1080/02634937.2015.1118207CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pope, Arthur Upham. Persian Architecture: The Triumph of Form and Color. London: Thames & Hudson, 1965.Google Scholar
Pope, Arthur Upham, and Ackerman, Phyllis, eds. A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present. 6 vols. London: Oxford University Press, 1938–39.Google Scholar
Ritter, Markus. Moscheen und Madrasabauten in Iran 1785–1848: Architektur zwischen Rückgriff und Neuerung. Leiden: Brill, 2005.Google Scholar
Robinson, Basil W. “The Burlington House Exhibition of 1931: A Milestone in Islamic Art History.” In Discovering Islamic Art: Scholars, Collectors and Collections, 1850–1950, edited by Vernoit, Stephen, 147–155. London: I. B. Tauris, 2000.Google Scholar
Rogers, J. Michael. “Nineteenth-century Tilework at Khiva.” In Islamic Art in the 19th Century: Tradition, Innovation and Eclecticism, edited by Behrens-Abouseif, Doris and Vernoit, Stephen, 363–385. Leiden: Brill, 2006.Google Scholar
Smith, Myron B., with Godard, Yedda, “Material for a Corpus of Early Iranian Islamic Architecture. I. Masdjid-i Djum‘a, Demāwend.” Ars Islamica 2, no. 2 (1935): 153–173.Google Scholar
Szántó, Iván, and Kardos, Tatjána. “The Mediation of Photography: Persian Paintings in European Printed Books and Journals.” In The Shaping of Persian Art: Collections and Interpretations of the Art of Islamic Iran and Central Asia, edited by Kadoi, Yuka and Szántó, Iván, 172–191. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.Google Scholar
Wilber, Donald N. The Architecture of Islamic Iran: The Il Khānid Period. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955; reprint, New York: Greenwood Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Wilber, Donald N. Adventures in the Middle East: Excursions and Incursions. Princeton, NJ: Darwin, 1986.Google Scholar