Symposium

Green Photographs: An In-moving Memory

Friday 22 October 2010

In this paper, we look at the archive of the photographs taken during the 2009 post-election protests in Iran, in order to explore how these images continues to shape the memory of the events. Initially, the flow of the images from the protests was simultaneously targeted at the outside world to bear witness to the events, as well as at the movement itself to organize and comprehend its own scope. As all documentation was banned by the government, the protestors consciously implicated themselves, their subjects, and their audience in the political act of photographing and being photographed. This political act is ongoing in the viewing the archive of the images. Situating the photographs and the collective memory of the events in the present leads us to understanding the movement’s potential as continuously building, not exhausted through the protests, then documented and historicized.

To cite this document:
James, Henry and Natalia Lebedinskala. 2010. “Green Photographs: An In-moving Memory”. Within Imaginaires du présent: Photographie, politique et poétique de l'actualité. Symposium hosted by Figura, Centre de recherche sur le texte et l'imaginaire. Montréal, Université du Québec à Montréal, 22 octobre 2010. Document vidéo. Available online: l’Observatoire de l’imaginaire contemporain. <https://oic.uqam.ca/en/communications/green-photographs-an-in-moving-memory>. Accessed on May 1, 2023.
Historical Periodization:
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Figures and Imaginary:
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