The Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami, who died in Paris earlier this week aged 76, was hugely influential in world cinema having won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1997 for his film A Taste of Cherry. Kiarostami was born in Tehran in 1940, and studied fine art at the city’s university. His other noteworthy films include Certified Copy (2010) and Close-Up (1990)—but crucially his photography also met with critical acclaim.
Earlier this year, the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto presented 50 full-scale images of doors by Kiarostami (Doors Without Keys). Curators selected the pictures from 200 works made by Kiarostami over 20 years. He found and photographed the doors—all locked—in Iran, France, Morocco and Italy. The images were displayed at the museum in a maze-like configuration.
In an interview, the artist explained what sparked his passion for photography. He told us: “I owe it to the 1979 Revolution [in Iran], because it was very hard to make films. I had to go on producing images, so I started taking still pictures. It became a parallel activity to film-making. They interact. There’s a mutual influence.”
He also explained why he was drawn to still photography, saying: “I guess it’s a defence mechanism, but also kind of a protest against all this—in my view—unwelcome movement in images. Some of my latest works are experimental films that last four or five minutes. But each still image can last four or five minutes. If an image is worth seeing, it takes concentration and contemplation.”
In 2009, Kiarostami showed a series of photographs entitled Road and Rain at Purdy Hicks Gallery in London; the exhibition was co-organised with the London-based arts organisation Candlestar whose director, Fariba Farshad, says: “When we were working on this show Kiarostami often told me that photography was his first love. 'It is my meditation,' he often said and the images that he made have the meditative, poetic quality that pervades all his work.”
Kiarostami told The Guardian in 2009: “The idea for this series of rain pictures is one I had a long time ago. I had spent years looking through my car windscreen, admiring the rural landscape, admiring the raindrops and the effect of light on them.”
Another important series called Snow White comprises 30 images of snow-covered landscapes taken between 1978 and 2004. A work from the series, some of which were taken on Iran’s Caspian coast, sold at Bonhams in 2008 for $132,000. “In the Snow White series, Kiarostami makes a transition from the urban to the natural, and with it replaces political discourse with philosophical contemplation,” said the catalogue entry.