1979

The title of the award-winning photo series by young photographer Maziar Moradi refers to a fateful year for his homeland of Iran—1979. Moradi documents therein his family’s impressions, fears, and experiences in the days of the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War.

Moradi was just four years old in 1979. Over the last several years he has gone back to this period and to Iran, reconstructing the fateful events that befell his family. He then started to make sketches for scripts and finally boiled down the scenes to the decisive moment that had changed the lives of those involved. With Moradi’s relatives re-enacting their own experiences, the stories are condensed into individual, telling images. Every photograph follows its own dramaturgy and structure. The detailed scenery as well as the use of light and color come together to create a one-of-a-kind pictorial language.