Roj Bash !

“Antoin Sevruguin (late 1830s-1933) was a celebrated photographer of late-nineteenth-century Iran. Sevruguin had two lifelong obsessions. The first was a cherished desire to record Iran in all its facets on glass plates; the second was to capture light in his photographs the way he so admired in Rembrandt’s paintings.”–BOOK JACKET. “In addition to his numerous pictures of urban life and portraits made in his famous studio in Tehran, Sevruguin made a photographic inventory of the landscape, archaeological sites, and people of Azarbaijan and continued the project in Kurdistan and Luristan (in southwestern Iran).”–BOOK JACKET. “In this generously illustrated book, the first ever devoted to Sevruguin and his singular work, six distinguished authors explore the photographer’s life and career.”

An exhibition of his works are in the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, Netherlands, and the website iranian.com published on line these wonderful pictures. Some of his portraits have an incredible humanity, tenderness and quite admiration toxard the models, far from the “colonialist” look on Eastern portraits.

Beggars and Dervishes have the same noble allure than in 17th century Spanish paintings.

And there is the same realism but with a sort of compassion in Sevruguin’s beggars than, for example Ribera’s dwarf :

And if Sevrugin admired Rembrandt, I think there are something common with the San Francis in ecstasy by Zurbaran in these Sufi faces…

Some of them are Kurdish figures, like these anonymous portraits of Kurdish girls :

Kurdish leaders, including Mohammad Khan Ardalan (third from right)