This was the picture that defined the Iranian Revolution. And the Wall Street Journal did a great write up about this picture. But since they haven’t exactly been nice here is an article I wrote using numerous sources (cited at bottom).
On Aug. 27, 1979, two parallel lines of 11 men formed on a field of dry dirt in Sanandaj, Iran. One group wore blindfolds. The other held rifles. The command came in Farsi to fire: “Atesh!” Behind the soldier farthest to the right, a 12th man also shot, his Nikon camera and Kodak film preserving in black and white a mass execution. (2)
Within hours, the photo ran across six columns in Ettela’at, the oldest newspaper in Iran. Within days, it appeared on front pages around the world. Within weeks, the new Iranian government annexed the offending paper. Within months, the photo won the Pulitzer Prize.
Ettela’at, however, didn’t print the photographer’s name, fearing his safety. The Pulitzer was officially awarded to “an unnamed photographer of United Press International,” the news service that distributed the photo in the U.S. It remains the only time the award has ever been given to an anonymous recipient. In fact, nearly three decades after the epochal photograph first appeared, almost no one knows who took it. (1)
Early life
Razmi grew up in Arak, Iran, born to a military clerk and a housewife. Interested in photography from an early age, he spent much of his time in a local photo shop developing film and shooting portraits. He bought his own camera at the age of 12, and at the urging of a local reporter, began his career in photojournalism by photographing a crime scene. He got a job with a small photo shop after the death of his Father, and later entered the military. He was hired by Ettela’at in 1973, and quickly earned a reputation of skill and bravery. Razmi chronicled the country’s 1979 change of power, as protests caused the Shah to flee the country and permitted Ayatollah Khomeini to take power. By August of 1979, hundreds of people associated with the former government had been executed, and Khomeini had begun sending Iranian military to Kurdistan to prevent an uprising. Razmi and an Ettela’at reporter, Khalil Bahrami, followed.
“Firing Squad in Iran”
On August 26, 1979, Bahrami learned that judge he knew would be trying Kurds the following day at the Sanandaj airport. In a 30-minute trial, 11 prisoners were charged with crimes of firearm trafficking, murder, and inciting riots, and were sentenced to death. The men were blindfolded and led outside to the airfield, where they were lined up several meters from their Shiite executioners. Razmi was unhindered by security forces, allowing him to stand to the behind the rightmost executioner and photograph the killings.
Razmi delivered his two rolls of film to the offices of Ettela’at, and chief editor Mohammed Heydari quickly decided to lead with one of Razmi’s photographs—the one taken at an instant where some of the executioners had fired and others had not—and furthermore decided to publish it anonymously to protect the photographer from government reprisal. United Press International quickly ordered a copy of the image and forwarded it to its bureaus around the world, again without a name associated. On August 29, newspapers such as the New York Times and Daily Telegraph ran the image, crediting UPI.
The image continued to receive international attention, and was nominated by UPI for the Pulitzer Prize. Not knowing the author of the photograph but having received it on the UPI wire, managing editor Larry DeSantis submitted the image to the Pulitzer Prize committee crediting an anonymous UPI photographer. Then, on April 14, 1980, it became the first and only anonymous image to ever win the Pulitzer Prize.
Later life
In the years that followed, Razmi continued his photography work, covering the Iran-Iraq War. Growing tired of war, he quit his job at Ettela’at in 1987 and opened a photography studio. In 1997, he was hired as the first “Official Photographer of the President and his Cabinet” under newly installed president Mohammad Khatami.
In 2006, he was approached by the Wall Street Journal and for the first time revealed that he was the photographer. He had never before opted to claim credit for the incendiary image out of fear of retribution, but, emboldened by the passage of time, he finally chose to do so out of disappointment for never being credited before. (3)
Now the timeline, I had originally edited it down to about half it’s size and skipped a lot of fluff. Because of a (non)” friendly request” by the Wall Street Journal I’ve ended up deleting it. If you want to see the full time line in all it’s boredom with good tidbits visit the article on their site.
But the short of it was as Mr. Razmi said, “There’s no more reason to hide.” After all he took the picture(s) with the Judges permission, he sorta hid Kurdistan and was the principal photographer for his paper covering the Iran-Iraq War, and when he was tracked down arrested and asked by the government to give up the negatives he had. He had gotten cleared in the trial of all wrong doing. (1) The timeline meantioned above laid out how fast the picture went from developed, to posted in the front page of the Ettela’at, to being posted/sold/and spread all over the world by the UPI, and finally ended up submitted to the Pulitzer Committee to be awarded the Pulitzer to the anonymous photographer. Plus some side info about how much they charged for the picture.
So now you know. At times reporters have given interviews on important pictures, but quite often the story is just as powerful, almost as much as the picture itself. The famous pictures aren’t always fully described. In “Flag of our Fathers,” Clint Eastwood attempted to show what all was involved in the photo of the American Flag rising on Iwo Jima. And he did a good job describing the conflicts that also went through the people. But even with that movie he still fell short. The situation heredescribed about is powerful, but still lacks the punch of what it really felt like. but I hope you get a clear picture of what one man’s snapshot… really did.
Update: It’s nice that the Pulitzer Prize Board is considering changing it’s records to correctly credit the photographer of that famous picture.
Sig Gissler, administrator of the Pulitzers, said Monday that the “evidence in the story appears clear and convincing” and that the board had the matter under review.
(5)
Cites:
Note: After being approached by the General Counsel of the Wall Street Journel I was threatened, basically called an idiot and left wondering why I bothered to write this post. Then I re-read the story and understood. It’s an important story that should be spread as much as possible. So to basically say screw you to them, I deleted a good part of the story I had edited (but still had whole sentences that their author had written) and rewrote the story using other sources. I’ve got to thank the author of the Wikipedia article for a large majority of the writing. And all the other sources cited above for the work I used from them. I may of used a sentence here and there from one of you and didn’t cite that at that point. For that I’m sorry. But I think you’ll find this article easier to read. and with just a little more info. The part that is missing that I liked… but couldn’t find a second source for was the timeline. The Counsel just didn’t like my edited version.
Tags: History, Interesting, Photographs, Photography
