![]() ![]() The date, 2560-2580 – refers to the solar calendar of Iran and the coronation date of Cyrus, the first Achaemenid king of Persepolis in 559 BC, fusing a point in ancient history with now. In Persepolis: 2560-2580 the viewer is presented with a grid of 38 small monochromatic images which taken at face value, along with documentation used to reinforce their authenticity, are a photo-documentary of the construction of the ancient Persian city of Persepolis. These deceptively simple and modest images, often recording aspects of everyday life in his native Tehran, help us to see through ‘impossible’ eyes, with previous works borrowing the exact viewing point of public statues – or empty shop windows – triggering a sequence of unanswered questions in the viewer. There is nothing passive in the act of viewing these images starting with the premise that our choices and interpretations of images aren’t set in stone, Ghazali’s photographs play with the viewers shifting perceptions of narrative and we are invited to become in active participant in constructing a world just outside normal reality. Whilst we have become used to regarding photography as the documentation and preservation of a true moment in time, Ghazali’s work intends to trigger doubt. Perceptions of truth and the histories that spool out from them are just some of the tools which Iranian conceptual photographer, Mohammad Ghazali, utilises in his work. If history is often a fiction ‘written by the victors’, then what we accept as truth might often more accurately be described as the accumulated observations of a host of unreliable witnesses. ![]() A review of Mohammad Ghazali: Persepolis: 2560-2580 ![]()
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