The director of the Tehran Museum of Modern Art, Reza Dabirinezhad, announced the opening of a unique photo exhibition from the museum's valuable collection titled 'This Eternal Appearance' on August 15. The exhibition will showcase works from the foreign photography collection, excluding pieces by Iranian artists.
Dabirinezhad noted that the museum's collection holds the oldest photograph in Iran. Among the exhibits will be the oldest photograph in Iran, taken by English photography pioneer Henry Fox Talbot in 1838. The collection also includes works from later periods, covering the development and various forms of photography.
Another attractive feature of the event will be the display of six photo albums, which are being shown for the first time. These albums originate from Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Japan, and France. They were cataloged around the Qajar period (1848–1896) or earlier, and contain pictures of people of Iranian descent taken outside of Iran.
As Dabirinezhad emphasized, these albums may contain some of the first photographs of Iranians taken in the world. The research of this section was conducted by three curators.
According to Dabirinezhad, this year marks the 200th anniversary of the invention of photography according to recorded narratives, and the exhibition coincides with this anniversary. The 'This Eternal Appearance' exhibition, dedicated to the history and development of photography, will run for one month at the Tehran Museum of Modern Art.
The exhibition presents a collection of existing works and rarely seen documents from the museum's collection—from the earliest photographs in Iranian history to contemporary art based on photography. Among the presented works are the creations of pioneers of artistic photography, such as French photographer Nadar, English photographers Julia Margaret Cameron and Henry Peach Robinson, as well as American photographers Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, and Ansel Adams. Works by contemporary artists are also featured, including German artist Hans Bellmer and American artists Lee Friedlander, John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, Robert Rauschenberg, William Wegman, and British artist David Hockney.
Exhibitions of the magazine Camera Work will also be shown, along with some photographs and preparatory sketches related to the project of American artist Dennis Oppenheim from 1977. This project was intended to be realized in the natural landscape around Tehran but was not completed due to the upheavals of that period.
The exhibition will present to the public for the first time six valuable historical albums containing portraits of political, cultural, and artistic figures from Europe and the Ottoman Empire, as well as images of daily life in 19th-century Japan. These albums depict the first groups of Iranian students in Europe—among the oldest portrait photographs of Iranians currently available.
'This Eternal Appearance' offers a look at the history of photography: from the earliest experiments in image capture to the status of photography as an independent medium in modern and contemporary art. The exhibition returns part of the Tehran Museum of Modern Art's little-known photo collection to viewers after ten years, offering a new narrative.
The museum, established in 1977, houses over 4000 items, including world-class Iranian, European, and American paintings, engravings, drawings, and sculptures from the 19th and 20th centuries. As the largest collection of Western art in the East, it includes works from almost all artistic periods and movements.
The museum was designed by Iranian architect Kamran Dibay, who incorporated elements of traditional Persian architecture. The building itself can be considered an example of modern art in the style of an underground Guggenheim Museum. Most of the museum grounds are located underground, featuring a circular path descending below and galleries branching outwards. In the museum gardens, Western sculptures by artists such as Ernst, Giacometti, Magritte, and Moore can be found.
