iran

A NASA astronaut whose parents are Iranian took a series of incredible photos of the West Asian country from space, poignantly adding that it "may be the closest I will ever get."

When 22-year-old Iranian woman Mahsa Amini died at the hands of morality police who deemed she was wearing her head covering improperly, it sparked a wave of unrest in the country -- A country that is difficult to document.

The Festival La Gacilly-Baden Photo, from 15 June to 15 October 2023, features The Orient, emphasizing photography in Iran and Afghanistan. The photo exhibits are all outdoors over 7 kilometers (4.3 miles), making it the longest outdoor gallery, which a quarter million visitors will view.

An Iranian photographer, who was about to embark on his "dream" of shooting the World Cup, has reportedly been arrested and imprisoned in his home country.

Following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody, women have been protesting against Iran's religious regime for nearly a month. As the country continues to protest, photos show what life looked like for Iranian women before the 1979 revolution.

A French tourist was arrested last year in Iran for flying a drone and taking aerial photos near the Iran-Turkmenistan border. He has been sentenced to eight years in prison under espionage charges.

Iranian music streaming website Melovaz is under fire today after it was discovered that, in accordance with the country's strict censorship policies, the site is forced to Photoshop out women out of album cover art. The policy means that women are being scrubbed—often very poorly—out of their own cover art, resulting in some very strange, almost comical album covers.

Photographer Farzad Orsgani was born in Iran and spent the first 16 years of his life there before emigrating. After noticing politics clouding people's perceptions of his home country, Orsgani decided to return to Iran to capture a new perspective through landscape photography.

Alexander Khimushin is a Queensland, Australia-based photographer who has been on the road for 9 years. During that span, he visited 84 countries. 10 months out of a year he's on the road shooting photos in remote places. He's currently working on a series titled "The World in Faces."

It started with a Facebook message.

Mr. Ghoorchian, I just found some pictures online of you practicing horseback archery and I was wondering if you were willing to teach me your techniques.Kind regards,Anna

Iran has arrested 8 models for posting Instagram photos in which the women are seen not wearing headscarves. The move is part of a larger crackdown against "un-Islamic" being shared in Iran through the social network.

During her time in Malaysia, roughly 3,500 miles away from her home in Iran, photographer Nafise Motlaq was troubled by the way people would talk about her country's culture. Partially perpetuated by the media, she saw people making judgements without any first-hand knowledge of the country's actual culture.

It was this frustration with misrepresentation that, once she was home, inspired Motlaq to pick up her camera and begin an intimate series of photographs exploring the father-daughter relationship in Iran.

Do you have dreams of being an outspoken reviewer of photography books? Certain provinces of Iran might not be the best place for you to launch that career. A pair of Iran photographers were recently sentenced to a total of 75 lashes for publishing negative reviews about an official's photography book.

Mohammad Reza Domiri Ganji is a 23-year-old physics student at Mazandaran University, and yet, you've probably seen his photography floating around the Internet as of late.

That's because, when he's not studying, Ganji is capturing truly stunning photographs of the colorful, architecturally gorgeous interiors of historical Mosques throughout the Middle East.

Amidst a barrage of privacy concerns, an Iranian court has ordered a ban of photo-sharing giant Instagram, reports the Associated Press.

#اینستاگرم فیلتر شد - #ایران #فیلترینگ #iran @ListenToUs @HassanRouhani pic.twitter.com/NnIDry4jsf— Soheil Gonzalez (@soheilr7) December 28, 2013

In most countries around the world, it's taken for granted that if you'd like to share a photo of your lunch or cat (even if, just maybe, you shouldn't) Instagram is ready and able to help you accomplish your goal. Of course, that's not true everywhere, as the people of Iran found out yesterday.

The Reportage Festival in Sydney, Australia is a well-known Vivid exhibition that displays the powerful work of some of the world's best photojournalists and documentary photographers. But this year, the New South Wales government has gotten involved by telling the curators what they can and cannot display, stirring up many photographers and anti-censorship advocates in the process.

New Zealand-based travel photographer Amos Chapple visited Iran on three personal trips between December 2011 and January 2013. While he was there, he photographed the country and its people as he saw them on the ground.

Iran recently made headlines when they unveiled their new state-of-the-art fighter jet, the Qaher-313. Touted as a cross between an F-35 and an F-22, it immediately fell under scrutiny when aviation experts pointed out that the plane that was unveiled could, at best, be only a miniature working prototype.

In response, the Khouz News website published the photo above, showing the 313 patrolling the skies over majestic Mount Damavand. Clearly this was the real deal, right? Not exactly. As it turns out, the photo is a Photoshop creation combining a wallpaper image courtesy of Picky Wallpapers, and one of the original photos of the jet from the unveiling.

Earlier this week, Iran generated quite a bit of media attention after claiming that it had successfully sent a monkey to space and safely brought it back down to Earth. The tiny monkey was reportedly sent into sub-orbital space 75 miles above ground.

To prove its accomplishment, Iran distributed the above photograph of the monkey strapped into its little spaceship chair.

Photographer Brandon Stanton has generated quite a bit of attention in the photo world through his project Humans of New York, which features thousands of portraits that form a visual census of the city. His goal is to capture 10,000 portraits of New Yorkers that are associated with points on a map.

Stanton recently visited the country of Iran to shoot similar portraits of its inhabitants. He tells us that by visiting the country as a tourist rather than a press member, he was able to get a "remarkable amount of access" in order to create a beautiful collection of intimate street portraits.

During the Iranian election protests back in 2009, a 26-year-old woman named Nedā Āghā-Soltān (above right) was shot and killed while standing around and observing protestors. After footage of her death went viral online -- Time says it's likely the "most widely witnessed death in human history" -- Neda's portrait became the face of the movement, as countless protestors around the world held large prints overlaid with statements like, "Neda did not die in vain." The problem is, one of the main photos used wasn't actually of Neda.

Guess who one of the newest members on Instagram is? Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran. His new account has the handle @khamenei_ir, the same as his surprisingly active Twitter account.

Every photo has a story, and this particular photo has one of the most interesting stories of them all -- a story of anonymous fame, and famous anonymity. To this day the above photo, titled "Firing Squad in Iran," is the only anonymous photo to ever win a Pulitzer Prize. And although the photo was taken in 1979, the photographer behind the lens didn't receive credit until 2006.