Interview with Reza

Cheryl Benard speaks to Reza, May 2017

Reza Deghati:  “When I was eight years old, I started to become very alert to things in my surroundings. I would walk around and see things that were very beautiful, a tree or a flower, or very sad, poor people or children with no shoes, and I would go home and want to tell everyone about it. But I noticed that they didn’t really react. They would just say yes, yes, that’s nice, or that’s too bad. So from this I concluded that I needed to somehow convey the experience of seeing what I had seen. I began to draw. Well, that was not very successful, I wasn’t very talented and when my family glanced at my drawings they would say, “what’s that supposed to be? A flower? A boy with no shoes? Those are supposed to be feet?”

Our family owned a camera, one of the old fashioned box kind. But we children did not have a very good association with this camera, because as far as we could tell the only purpose it had was to take family photos on vacations. My father had been told that for the photos to turn out well, the subjects had to be facing the sun. So we would all have to stand still in place, lined up, staring into the sun, while our father took what seemed like an eternity to finally take our picture. It never occurred to me, or to any of us, that one could take pictures of other things with such a camera as well, besides posed group family photos.

One day this camera was sitting on the table, and out of idle curiosity I looked into the finder and saw an image of the room. I asked my father, will it take a picture of anything? Of course, he said. I asked him if I could borrow it, and he said yes.

I realized that this was for me. I saved my allowance and after a year, I was able to buy a camera of my own. Then it took me another half year to figure out how to use it, because I had bought it in the bazaar from a shopkeeper who had no idea how to use it either.

At no time did it occur to me that photography could be a profession. It was a hobby. So when it came time for me to go to the university I tried to think of what I might study that would keep me close to it. I knew that lenses were related to physics, so I signed up for that. After a year, there still was no mention of lenses, it was just formulas all the time. So I went to the professor and I asked him when we were going to start learning about lenses. Lenses? he asked. I explained that this was why I had enrolled in physics, because I was interested in cameras and wanted to learn how lenses worked. He explained to me that I was on the wrong track and that we were never going to learn about lenses, and he regretfully told me that one could not study photography at the university in Teheran. So after thinking about it for a while I decided to study architecture, because I liked design and drawing.

After I graduated I went to work for an architecture firm. We had an office on the fifth floor of a building in Teheran. One day, there was some sort of commotion on the street below. We looked out the window and there was a demonstration of students, against the Shah. This was something completely new for me. I hadn’t heard of any opposition to the Shah, so we all stood at the window watching. And after a short time some trucks arrived with soldiers, and they jumped out with guns, and they shot at the students. And as we watched, completely in shock, I noticed a man off to the side, with a camera, taking pictures of what was happening. I was blown away by this, it was just a completely illuminating new idea.

I asked for three days off from work. My colleagues assumed that I needed time off because I was so traumatized by what we had just witnessed, so they agreed. But in fact I never went back. I went out on the streets and photographed what was happening. After a few days, foreign correspondents started arriving, and I found a group of photographers and offered to help. I told them I could translate for them, or take them where they wanted to go, and I would do it for free. So we went around together and after a few days they started to notice how interested I was in photography. I told them that I, too, took photographs and they said I should show them. I brought some of my pictures and they said, “come on Reza, you’re pulling our leg, don’t lie, you didn’t take these. These are too professional.” I went home and brought the contact sheets to show them see, yes, these ARE mine. And after a while they believed me and they asked me if I didn’t want to work as a photographer. This led to my first contract with Newsweek.

So I photographed throughout, the revolution…the iconic picture of the American hostages, blindfolded, I took that. And for my signature I used just my first name, Reza. That’s a very common name in Iran, so my hope was that it wouldn’t be too easy for the Khomeini regime to figure out who I was. Eventually they did, and I had to leave the country. I worked for Time and Life, and later for National Geographic.”

Discover even more about Reza’s work: http://www.rezaphoto.org/