Over the past year, Tori Egherman, Kamran Ashtary, and Hamid Tehrani have been working on the book Hope, Votes & Bullets, which is currently available.

Here is the text of the introduction:

A few days before the election, a friend called from the middle of hundreds of thousands gathered in Azadi [Freedom] Square in support of reform and wearing green. “Can you believe what we have done?” We heard the hope and excitement in his voice. “I am in the middle of half a million people,” he told us. “We are changing Iran.” A few years earlier he had told us that he would never ever get involved with politics again. He had been a student activist in the late 90s and felt betrayed by the regime and his fellow citizens when the movement was violently dispersed and many of its participants imprisoned, some for years. Now our friend was full of hope. How could we help but feel otherwise?

This book was born from that hope. It started with email chats and phone calls and ballooned into a major undertaking that will likely be an ongoing project for years to come. The three of us working on collecting the material shared a love for Iran, a passion for blogs and blogging, and a strong sense of the imperfect power of democracy. We shared a connection, both virtual and physical. We had all been up nights blogging about the campaign in Iran, talking to strangers, friends, family: anyone who would share information about what was happening on the streets.

Since the election, we have collected blog posts, images, and articles that reflect the immediacy of the year in Iran from the flawed elections to the silent marches, to crackdowns, executions, torture, and rape; from Where is my vote to I demand my rights, from reform to activism, wrongs to rights, revolution to evolution and back again.

This is a personal collection, filled with raw emotion, interspersed with more measured reflection. Journalists, writers, filmmakers, academics, activists, bloggers, artists, cartoonists, and bloggers have all contributed. The book honors the diversity of their voices and opinions.

This book does not tell the whole story and does not try to. There are many voices, too many for any book to ever give a complete view of what happened over the past year in Iran.

Several of the authors have chosen to remain anonymous, others are named. Some have written specifically for this collection, others have agreed to allow us to reprint their work.

This is a shared effort with many voices and images; it is a labor of love, framed in a design that gives life and power to the words and the events behind them.

Read more at the book’s website.

Purchase Iran: View From Here, a book of photographs

From A Love Letter from Iran, a review by author Kamin Mohammadi:

In describing Iran one is in danger of wearing out that age-old cliché — this is a land of contrasts — and Tori and Kamran’s book does not attempt to explain away the complexity or many contradictions or try to make sense of them. But within the atmospheric range of images and bittersweet essays printed here, they beautifully capture and communicate the immense charm of Iran, its ability to enslave the heart, and the tenacity of its hold over the affections in spite of the frustrations of living there. Most of all, this book is a visual love letter to a country that can befuddle the mind and nourish the soul all at the same time.

Read the rest online at Payvand.

Available in select bookstores. Click here for availability in Amsterdam.

Click here for a flash preview of the book.

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The price of $23.00 does not include shipping. Shipping takes 1-3 weeks.

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Iran: A View from Here features photographs taken over three years of living in Iran. It is a personal account that features images of Iran that not only include the snow-covered mountains and desert expanses that surround the county but also images that define the culture of Iran: images of mourning and celebration, of day-to-day life, and of special events. We’ve captured an Iran that eludes the casual visitor and often escapes the notice of professional photographers. To order a copy of the book, click on one of the “buy now” buttons above.

The cost of the book is $23.00 plus shipping and taxes. Shipping is $2.50 per book in the US and about €6.80 per book outside the US.

“The most elaborate method to try to understand Iran is captured in the pages of this book. To live in Iran like Tori and Kamran have done, means riding a constant rollercoaster of impressions. Every time you think you have it all figured out, Iranians surprise you.”

–Thomas Erdbrink

Thomas Erdbrink is the Iran-based Middle East correspondent for the Dutch daily newspaper NRC. He has worked and lived in Iran since 2001.

Kamran and I saw the documentary film Landscapes Unknown II, which was astounding in its portrayal of the artist’s vision. The filmmakers Melle van Essen and Riekje Ziengs were able to bridge the distance between the the viewer and the artist and, in a sense, give us new eyes to see with.

At one point, the artist Frans Walon who is completely obsessed with capturing the things that he sees says that we all secretly hope that after death we will continue to see. When I heard that, I realized that, of course, he is correct.

If you are in Amsterdam, you can see the film at the International Film Festival (IDFA) at these times:

Tuschinski 2, Thu 29 Nov. 12:30
Tuschinski 4, Fri 30 Nov. 19:00
Compagnie – Grote Zaal, Sun 02 Dec. 16:30

And an apology to all those folks who got emails from me… And a plea for better INFORMATION DESIGN.

Okay, I am a complete idiot. I hope some of the designers of Stumble Upon read this so that I can tell them how angry I am. I read something like: “add your contacts and see who else is on stumble upon.” SU showed me a page of people I knew. I clicked on “add” or something like that and it added every single contact in my address book.

Years and years of effort to avoid sending spam, automated emails, and other annoying crap down the drain. I’ve avoided opening viruses, avoided sending on chain letters, avoided joining endless annoying viral networks only to have all my credibility ruined by a misleading interface. Am I alone?

Where can I complain about the horrific information design?

Where: Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam. In the basement of the new building, room K-18
When: October 31, 2007, at 4 pm

Description

In the Netherlands, the evidence of thoughtful design is everywhere: the bike paths, the traffic crossings, the newspapers, the garbage collection, and the café menu, to name but a few. Here, design has become a habit, a way of life. The belief in its power is fundamentally unquestioned.

Yet even here, there are pockets of doubt. Imagine how much more difficult it is to come to a shared agreement when the value of design has never been firmly established and in a culture where the fundamentals of communication differ dramatically.

The speaker found herself in that situation when she did design work in Iran. For four years, she lived and worked in Tehran: a city that has forgotten design after just thirty years of explosive growth. There are no orderly traffic crossings, no thoughtfully organized neighborhoods, and few carefully designed restaurant menus. (There are, however, great posters.)

In this talk, Tori Egherman will discuss some of the communication issues that arose when she and her husband did work with Iranian companies and civil servants.

About the speaker: Tori Egherman is a partner with her husband in Ashtary Design. She is an American who has lived and worked in the U.S., The Netherlands, and Iran. You can read about her experiences in Iran at viewfromiran.blogspot.com.

The exhibit designed by Ashtary Design opened the week of June 12th in Tehran’s Saba Cultural Center.

For information about how your cultural institution can rent this traveling exhibit, email us at info (AT) ashtarydesign.com or leave a comment on this post, and we will get back to you.

Saba to honor Dutch golden age painters

From Iran Mania

Sunday, June 10, 2007 – July 10, 2007 IranMania.com

LONDON, June 10 (IranMania) – The Saba Art and Cultural Institute and the Netherlands Embassy in Tehran in a collaborative effort will commemorate Rembrandt and a number of other great 17th-centruy Dutch artists in an exhibition, which will be held from June 12 until July 10, MNA reported.

From Tehran Times

Tehran Times Art Desk
TEHRAN — The Saba Art and Cultural Institute and the Netherlands Embassy in Tehran in a collaborative effort will commemorate Rembrandt and a number of other great 17th-centruy Dutch artists in an exhibition, which will be held from June 12 until July 10.

From Iran Daily

An exhibition of copies of paintings by Rembrandt and three other artists belonging to the ’golden age’ of Dutch art is currently underway at Saba Cultural Center in Tehran and will continue until July 1.

According to ISNA, the inaugural ceremony was attended by a number of Iranian and foreign artists, Dutch charge d’affairŽs as well as the Canadian, Czech, Korean, Romanian, Mexican and Hungarian ambassadors and representatives of the UN and UNICEF.

You can view it here: http://ashtarydesign.com/saveh.htm

In Persia is the city called Saveh, from which the three Magi set out when they came to worship Jesus Christ. Here, too, they lie buried in three sepulchres of great size and beauty. Above each sepulchre is a square building with a domed roof of very fine workmanship. The one is just beside the other. Their bodies are still whole, and they have hair and beards. One was named Beltasar, the second Gaspar, and the third Melchior.

Messer Marco asked several of the inhabitants who these Magi were; but no one could tell him anything except that they were three kings who were buried there in days gone by. But at last he learnt What I will tell you.

Three days farther on, he found a town called Kala Atashparastan, that is to say Town of the Fire-worshippers. And that is no more than the truth; for the men of this town do worship fire. And I will tell you why they worship it. The inhabitants declare that in days gone by three kings of this country went to worship a new-born prophet and took with them three offerings -gold, frankincense, and myrrh – so as to discover whether this prophet was a god, or an earthly king or a healer. For they said : ‘If he takes gold, he is an earthly king; if frankincense, a god; if myrrh, a healer.’

(This quote is from Robert Latham’s translation of Marco Polo’s book The Travels and was found on Farsinet

Saveh is a strange place just a couple of hours west and south of Tehran. Maz Maz, an Iranian snackfood giant has a factory nearby, a branch of the National Oil Company is located there, Azad University also has a branch in Saveh, and the best pomegranites in Iran, and perhaps the world, are reportedly grown in the fields surrounding this town.

It is reported that Marco Polo stayed in the ancient caravanserai in Saveh. He wrote about Saveh in his book The Description of the World. In that book, he relates that the people of Saveh told him that the three kings were buried at Saveh and that at least one of them was a Zoroastrian Priest.

One the National Geographic website, the authors write that the translations of Marco Polo’s books were filled with biases, editorial judgements, and errors.

For example, when some translators were presented with the news that the three Magi were buried at Saveh in Persia rather than in Cologne, they inserted that the people of Saveh tell many lies.

The fact is, that when the ticket taker at the caravanserai told us that Marco Polo stayed there, we had a hard time believing him too.

Links:
The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1
The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 2
Were the Three Kings Persian?
National Geographic on Marco Polo
Farsinet’s round-up of information on the Three Kings

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