Bahman Jalali

Bahman Jalali was an Iranian photographer, teacher and historian of photography. Born in Tehran, he died there in 2010. He studied economics and political science at Melli University in Tehran, and in 1974 he joined the Royal Photographic Society in Britain. His black and white pictures record the Iranian Revolution of 1978 to 1979, the Iran-Iraq War, daily life and desert architecture.

His war books include Abadan Fights On (1981) and Khorramshahr. Later he worked in photomontage. In Image of Imagination, a series that includes a LACMA print dated 2003 to 2005, he combined studio photographs from the Qajar era, sometimes adding pressed flowers. He taught photography at Iranian universities for more than 25 years. He was a founding member of Akskhaneh Shahr, opened in Tehran in 1997 as the first photography museum in Iran, and started the quarterly Aksnameh with Rana Javadi in 1998.

The Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona held a retrospective in 2007, curated by Catherine David, and Kunsthaus Graz showed it in 2009. Villa Romana in Florence presented Excerpts from a Lifework in 2010. In 2011 Stiftung Niedersachsen awarded him the SPECTRUM International Photography Prize, and Sprengel Museum Hannover, which holds his archive, mounted an exhibition. In 2022 the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington showed his work with Javadi's in Living in Two Times.