man it’s sad how times changed and not for the better…

“I’ve been Iranian for ages”, said Shappi Khorsandi, the successful standup comedian, last night at her brilliant show in Glasgow. I could feel her words, which were beyond simple crystallization of psychological urges for a gone past, or an altered identity, for better or worse. In fact being an Iranian myself with hysteric intentions of hiding my nationality in the wake of recent inexplicable Islamic extremism which were complemented by international notoriety thanks to those who run the government, I could clearly sense her re-repressed nostalgia in her labyrinthine of comic words. You might wonder, what has become of a nation so indebted to cultural and social reciprocity? A nation with an immensely large educated middle-class? And by ‘educated’ I mean baccalaureate at the least. Well, that nation has lost the game of democracy, my friend, to theocracy; society-centrism to Ayatollah-centrism. We, every once in a while, pour out to the streets in hope of even screaming the word ‘Freedom,’ ‘Secularism’ and ‘Separatism.’ Others like me, continue with putting a ‘nonidentarian’ mask on our face, strolling the distance between university, work and where we live, while thinking about the ‘why’ which blindfolded our fathers and led them to streets and polls; that ‘why’ is simple to tell: the “opiate” they took and perhaps enjoyed, but we are to pay!

I have fallen in love with both the Iranian people and their rightous struggle against religous extremism and their Facist government. They want to shed the yoke of facist hegomony that Ayatollah Ruhollah Mustavi Khomeini duped on their parents generation.
Khomeini’s wretched maniacal concept of “Valayat-e faqih” which really means (ISLAM FIRST AND FOREMOST—history and nationalism of IRAN irelavant-those were Khomeini’s words himself). HIs evil designs turned the great nation of the Lion and the Sun, into an Orwellian Facist State. Far from the Islamic paradise Khomeini and his followers promised, they enshrined their brand of Islamofacist hegemony over every facet of Iranian life, with Khomeini as the “Supreme Leader”–a representative of God himself. Instead of increased economic productivity, egilatarism and fair “islamic justice’, history has proven the Islamic Republic as up there with NAZI Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union. Poverty has engulfed almost half the people, (a nation that has one of the biggest proven petro and natural gas reserves…so I say WTF?), Political opponents are jailed and executed for sedition, religious minorities such as the Baha’i, are raped, tortured and forced to convert, few do, so they are killed like beasts, and the vibrant ethnic patchwork that was Iran under the Shah, has been replaced with one group favored over another.
Let me be clear the Iranian people and the world was so faked by this charleton, he was like the serpent with forked tongue. Even those in the west initially considered him the “Iranian Ghandi”…God knows how wrong we could have been.
Now let us talk about the result of Khomenie’s velayat-e faqih. This vile concept formed the foundation for the Islamofacist state he built over 32 years ago. It has been one of horror, hypocracy, increasing poverty,and oppression of all opponents by a decadent primevil justice system(through jailings and wonton daily executions). What is happening inside Iran today reaches almost the level of pestulance. But then again the Facists want to herald the end of the world for their awaited “12th Imam” no matter how many Iranian people, mostly defenseless women and children and religious minorities,including progressive muslims, die in the process.
The roots of Islamofacist are in the Old Testament, Laviticus to be exact. We need to face the facts and live up it, we Christians and Jews, we also have a historical Facist past of oppression. We in the WEST must all rally to the Iranians’ struggle for freedom, for it is in our interest as well. After all, our governments helped set up fertile ground for Islamofacism to grow. It is a patriotic duty of every American to see a free and vibrant Iranian nation.
“Tomorrow in a FREE Tehran”
AZADI IRAN

[...] R&R Gallery’s show Before the Chador. How Khomeini’s repressive Iranian Revolution changed Iranian society [...]

I am disappointed that this show was open for only one night. I would have loved to have seen it in person, and learned more about these photographs.

OMG they’re really JUST like us Americans! Picnics and Sunday drives in shiny automobiles!!

Fantastic Shots! I have made a post with the 9th photo in my Blog all about Paykan: http://www.PaykanHunter.com take a visit.

Of related interest is Aza Nafisi’s memoir, Things I’ve Been Silent About: http://azarnafisi.com/books/things-ive-been-silent-about/

while i appreciate this post and the beauty of these photos, you are narrow-minded in your (mis)conception of iran. even the title for this gallery, “before the chador” presupposes a false dichotomy of “muslim iran” and “secular iran” when in fact it was (and is) much more nuanced than that.

these are amazing shots of life in Iran, before things went bad for them.

You didn’t need to go back to the 60s to illustrate this perspective. You could have shown any image from 1978 to show the sophistication of the population. Sure, Iran still had regions of poverty and development however the country was experiencing a dramatic boom, increased literacy and an explosion of education and commerce from the middle and upper class.

Shame on the Carter administration for making such a terrible foreign policy mistake and helping Khomeini to come to power, and in turn igniting radical islam and the major destabilization of the entire region.

Not to mention the sad destruction of a generation, of any hope, and the defacing of a loving, profoundly rich culture.

I’m a US citizen now- I see it from both sides. My heart is broken for the people of Iran.

The shame goes on the heads of so many makers of American foreign policy who support tyrannical rulers all over the world. For the sake of oil or whatever resources are around, these rulers exploits their people and horde Swiss bank accounts as they rib their nations. The Sha, Quaddafi, or Saddam. Its just a matter of time and opportunity before their people rise up against their oppressors , which oft times includes America. Payback is a bitch.

Dear Ms. Bloom,

I am not sure if you will still be in New York but I wanted to extend an invitation to a screening of Pearls on the Ocean Floor, taking place at The Pacific Design Center on Tuesday, April 26th at 7:30 pm, given this recent piece regarding life in Iran before the 1979 Revolution. If you can’t make it, please let me know if you’d like to review the film. I’ll always remember your Slate piece Who’s Afraid of Feminism, and feel you would find this film thought-provoking and refreshing, in that it features 16 female artists including Shadi Ghadirian, Shrin Neshat, Sara Rahbar and Parastou Forouhar.

The evening will also feature a post-screening discussion with leading Iranian academics, including Vassar sociologist Farzin Vahdat and UCI Professor Nasrin Rahimieh.

Farzin Vahdat is a sociologist interested in notions and conditions of modernity and their applications to Iran, Islam and the Middle East. He is the author of God and Juggernaut: Iran’s Intellectual Encounter with Modernity (Syracuse University Press, 2002) as well as the forthcoming book, Islamic Ethos and the Specter of Modernity which deals with some Iranian and non-Iranian Islamic intellectuals and their discourses in relation to the forces of the modern world. Vahdat has taught at Tufts, Harvard and Yale Universities and Vassar College and is currently conducting research at Vassar.

Dr. Rahimieh’s research has focused on intercultural encounters between Iran and the West, modern Persian literature, literature of exile and displacement, women’s writing, and post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. Her publications include Oriental Responses to the West: Comparative Essays on Muslim Writers from the Middle East (Brill, 1990) and Missing Persians: Discovering Voices in Iranian Cultural Heritage (Syracuse University Press, 2001).

Robert Adanto

Hey Phil – Iran became modernized and educated in those photos you see above because of the Shahs progressive reforms. Incidentally, those reforms were protested violently by the Islamic clerical establishment. First from Reza Shah I, then his son until he was deposed in 1979 by your friend the Ayatollah Khomeini. Think again if you think all rulers are “tyrants” you idiot.

[...] Clique aqui para ver outras fotos. [...]

Those photos are so sad. I have seen other collections of photos from Iran before Khomeini. A medical school classmate had fled Iran because he opposed the Shah. Years later, when he was married and had children, he went back to Iran to see his parents who still lived in Teheran. He was taken aside in the Teheran airport by the SAVAK for questioning. He thought, “Oh Oh, I’m in trouble.” In fact, all they said was that he could stay to see his parents if he would serve his year in the Iranian armed forces. Otherwise, he would have to fly back to the US. He decided to stay and was assigned to an oil field where he learned to play golf. He was able to spend time with his parents and went home to California when his year was up.

Then came Khomeini and he would never have dared to go back.

Very sad. There is a good novel by James Clavell about the Iranian revolution called “Whirlwind.”

When I lived in Tehran in 68-69, most of the younger women wore the then fashionable mini skirts. These pics, judging by the cars, were taken 10 years earlier. when we went to the bazaar, my wife (then in her 20s) wore a head scarf in deference, but still a mini skirt, as that’s all she had.

Image 2 shows the Griffon at Persepolis

http://tinyurl.com/3ojhjbv

There is a sequence of photos of the graduating classes of an Egyptian university over time. Similarly to Iran there is creeping hair covering for women. On gets the sense that it is partially an assertion of a cultural identity that is deliberately different from the West. While I do think that young Arabs and Persians will obtain greater personal freedom to dress as they like in the future, I don’t think they will be trying to look like their peers in the west again.

Reminds me of my family pictures of Cuba before Castro

@Phil Tarley
” Its just a matter of time and opportunity before their people rise up against their oppressors , which oft times includes America. Payback is a bitch.”

Who really got the payback? The only thing being suppressed during the Shah’s reign was free political expression. With the revolution the Iranian people still have no freedom of expression and the potential to have most of the details of their lives controlled by the religious police. For some reason, I doubt this is what they really wanted.

For all those here who are railing against religious tyranny and the evils of theocracy, you should keep in mind that all tyrannies seek to find a basis to justify what they are doing. In Iran’s case if just happens to be a rabid fundamentalist viewpoint, but it could have been just about anything else….say something like what Pol Pot set up in Cambodia. In this case, religion happened to be the best way to control the population and justify that control. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao (thinking Red Guards here), Khomeini….they are all alike. Not one difference except for what they used to justify their oppression.

Women in Iran could vote at least a decade before the Swiss women; and this vile man Khomeini sent a letter to Mohammad Reza Shah expressing is concern over women voting; of course, he was ignored; women were involved in all facets of life from ministries to serving in the army, etc. etc. – and look at us today :(

Yikes! That’s some ugly women.

Tarley and others grossly miss the point wrt the role of the US in the aspirations of the peoples who live under tyrranical rule – meaning the overwhelming majority of the world’s population. I might add that this club includes no none zero nations of the West. In Iran, the Gulf States, Arabic nations, Africa, Islamic nations… despots are the only leaders there are. They are the only potential leaders there are. The only aspiring leaders there are. So we in the West are forced to choose btwn despots we can influence and despots we cannot influence. Blame the West all you want. Blame our oil-lust. Blame Colonialism. Blame neo-Colonialism. Blaming others is both cause and effect, symptom and disease. You want freedom? Fight for it. Go back home and put your life on the line for it. Stop blaming the West for your pathological embrace of despotism. I can betcha that if/when the Green Revolution in Iran succeeds, more slaughter and more despotism will ensue. You are accustomed to the lash. You crave the lash.

[...] Photo from Iran, Before The Chador picture gallery [...]

[...] Iran before the chador [...]

[...] in ’60s cocktail dresses sipping Courvoisier in open-air bistros along the Tigris, and Iran looked like this. The young people of the region want the lives in their parents’ old photographs, and if the [...]

[...] http://flavorwire.com/165011/photo-gallery-iran-before-the-chador [...]

good ole days……

My dad vacationed in Iran in the 60s when he was a little kid with my grandparents and it sounded amazing. I actually went in 2001 and my memories of it are so different than his. Its still a beautiful country just a lot sadder.

[...] particular region, that it is a glimpse into a world that is long dead; it is beautifully sad. As Judy Burman aptly describes, it feels “so rare, valuable, and ultimately bittersweet.” [Hat-tip: [...]

image 4 i know the boy on left i am shock to see this picture

I have a lot of really interesting pictures of my mother’s family before the chador as well and never thought that people would find it interesting. Most of the photographs I found are at royal dinner parties and other military functions since my grandfather was fourth general to the Shah right before the revolution. It’s amazing what I learned from those photos. I never knew they lived such care free and extravagant lives. I always feel so sorry for both my parents and how they were forced to leave everything behind and start from scratch in a place where they didn’t even know the language at first. I’m so glad these photographs are open to the public.

[...] Flavorwire В» Photo Gallery: Iran Before the Chador Mar 25, 2011 … My heart is broken for the people of Iran. … I have seen other collections of photos from Iran before Khomeini. …. the lives in their parents' old photographs, and if the [...] … [...]

فقط بايد اظهار تاسف كرد چه دوران خوشي داشتيم حيف شد

[...] photo of an Iranian woman in a bathing suit leaning against a 60′s era car, as seen at  Iran, Before The Chador picture gallery inspired me to compare her to American soldiers reduced to wearing the hijab in Afghanistan, [...]

[...] 1960-е… [...]