Oswald Wittower - IRAN
The grand Persian empire has always strongly held my interest - a thick veil of mysteries, a place where ruins and legends seem to coexist with a less well-known modern world.
That image I had – clear yet obscure – of this complicated and two-faced society turned out, after my modest and short stay there, to be quite true: a place with an austere face but a carefree heart.
It’s impossible to escape the contemporary political and social connotations that Iran brings with it. Yet this does not ring with my personality and ultimately, my art work. I could have focused on the people I met, the ones I did not, so many charming, kind and interesting characters, but – maybe because this analogue series was shot with an old, heavy soviet camera that holds a kind of timeless feeling by itself – I decided to depict the idea of – almost – ruins. Those are not always literal ruins, but the echoes of a an ancient society, and how they eventually act as a plinth for what is Iran today.
Something that particularly held my enthusiasm was the ghostly background of Zoroastrian religion that is present in many small ways, especially in the epicentre of the desert city of Yazd – a real wonder. This religion is very different from Islam but still deeply imbedded within the fabric of Iran.
The ritualistic treatment of the Zoroastrian dead is particularly captivating. Since flesh would soil the sacred elements of earth and fire, corpses were hoisted upon circular structures called “dakhma” – the towers of silence - to be devoured by vultures.