Iran: A Picture Book

Between 2011 and 2014 the German photographer Oliver Hartung travelled across Iran to document its public monuments, murals and memorials, publishing the results as Iran / A Picture Book.

Working in a typological, deadpan style, Hartung records the visual culture that has filled Iranian public space since the 1979 revolution: war memorials to the 1980–88 conflict with Iraq, portraits of the ayatollahs painted on building facades, and the odd, often absurd civic sculpture. A wheat sheaf doubles as a street lamp in Damghan. A hand grenade in Isfahan is stamped with an internet icon. Captions give each location in English. The book was published by Spector Books in Leipzig as a thread-sewn paperback of 340 pages carrying 470 colour images, designed by Hartung with Helmut Völter.

Hartung, born in 1973 and based in Berlin and Leipzig, has worked since 2007 on a long-term project surveying the Middle East through its built and painted public imagery; Iran / A Picture Book followed his earlier Spector Books title on Syria, Syria Al-Assad, and extends the same typological method to a different state's visual propaganda.