An Approach to the Historiography of Contemporary Iranian Photography:From the Immediacy of Photograph in 1980s to the Hypermediacy of the Photograph in 2000s

The history of contemporary Iranian photography has so far largely focused on the description of political and social events and their impact on the photography trend. While the description of this process may not be chronological, it must also study the developments of image and visual language of photograph, which itself has been changing along with politics and social life. To this end, in the present article, David Bolter and Richard Grusin's theory of the dual logic of "immediacy" and "hypermediacy" is adopted as an analytical approach.Bolter and Grusin, have categorized media into a spectrum ranging from Hypermediacy to Immediacy. They believe that from Renaissance onward media have had a development and inclination towards immediacy i.e. they have tried to present to their audience a more tangible and accessible realm. Along the above-mentioned spectrum the following could be enumerated; Perspective Painting, Photography, Cinema, Television and Digital Media. The movement towards immediacy or in fact the fluctuation between immediacy and hypermediacy has occurred within each medium as well.The result shows: From the 1980s to the 2000s, photography has changed from “immediacy” to “hypermediacy”, and from “appropriating outer reality” to “reflecting media reality.” Influenced by the Revolution and the War of the 1980s, photography was subdued by the outer reality, became but a channel for transfer, and itself had no opportunity and inclination for self-revelation; which means that in this period, the logic of immediacy was dominant. Photography aims to inform and arouse the audience by creating and strengthening a sense of facing the real time and place. In this decade, the understanding of photography was based on the appropriating outer reality, and the features of photographic imagery stemmed from the structure of reality, but in the following decades, the role of the media in reflecting reality is highlighted, and the experience of the photograph happens with the attitude that we encounter, not with reality, but with mediated and mediatized reality (organized with media), and in some cases only with the media itself. In 1990s, When the social and political upheavals of the mid-1980s had subsided and photographers heeded ordinary subjects in their surroundings, the expressive features of the photographer (style) and the visual characteristics of photos (form) were stressed further, and the medium got ample room for self-expression. In this decade, the academic environment of arts, among other factors, contributed to the logic of hypermediacy as well as immediacy. The new photography approach of the late 1990s was influenced by the political and social atmosphere and transboundary relations in photography. The increase in arts and photography opinion articles, upgrading photography education to the masters degree, and emphasizing the theoretical field have guided photography toward thought-oriented and conceptual approaches, and in turn, self-reflexivity and self-awareness (representations of hypermediacy). In the 2000s, largely influenced by new approaches to photography in the West and with greater attention to theoretical studies of art, photography shifted to self-contemplation and self-reference. This study is descriptive, analytical and qualitative, and using library research.