Behrouz Reshad Photography

Born inNorth of IRAN in 1955, Reshad was radicalized by the widespread deprivations he witnessed during the Depression and dedicated himself to working for social and economic justice.

Behrouz Reshad’s Documentary Photographs are also part of a larger scaled  history of social documentary photography Inspired by the older Gerneration of the  nineteenth and early twentieth century sociologists such as Jacob Riis (1849-1914) and Lewis Hine (1874-1940) took up the camera or enlisted the services of contemporary photographers to add credibility to their studies. While a number of cultural critics and activist artists are critical of the reformist perspective that has shaped the historical trajectory and discourse of documentary photography, Reshad himself would argue that while social documentary photographers share the aim of inciting their viewers to awareness and shows them the very clear sides of life, their perspectives in fact vary– from visions of social reform that ameliorates the conditions of social ills to a more radical critique of the social structures that produce these conditions.

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His “Human in Work” (1980)and “Children and liberation”(1979) Exhibitions have been among the very unique eye openning photo exhibitions of its times in IRAN.Photographs of workers at work ,break time and at home, visual manifestations of the fullness of people’s lives and of the specificities and complexities of gender,.Morality , and Social class in particular locations and at particular historical moments of the Iranian Region.Reshad Has traveled all around Iran to document different sides of the life in villages and work spaces,where people just work to live and get by.
What is critically important is that while Reshad recognizes the impact of social conditions and is unfailingly critical of the social and economic structures that made all that happen,in His photos he never tries to exagerate or make fake situations . Rather, he aims to convey the effects of material reality on his subjects and how people live their lives in relation to social conditions. He does not show people apart from their own life ,or make some Artistic Portraits as he also claims he has never been satisfied with a one-dimensional portrayal of a subject, and his photographs defy simplistic interpretation, instead suggesting questions – about individual lives, communal circumstances, and the social and economic structures that shape these circumstances.

He clearly shows us the life of laborious people in Factories,jungles and seasides of North and south of Iran  and the contrast between people and machines at the age of factories and machines.

“My Photographs are Black and white,while most of my subjects are people of villages or factory workers with  colorful clothings,I believe that the colors of the clothing is used to replace the lack of colors in their real living environment,so I decided to avoid photographing in color which could just amaze the viewr or make the photos more playful than expressive.”Says Reshad,answering to a question of an interviwer(1976,No894,Sun.3,RSTKHZ)

He has represented some of his works as Exhibitions in various cities of Iran like Vesal Gallery(shiraz),Mani Gallery(Tabriz) ,Naghsh Gallery(Tehran),Tehran museum of contemporary arts etc. Entitled:”Children and labor”,”human and Work”,”Life in Baluchistan” etc.