Discourse Analysis of Subalternity: Photographic Representation of Subalterns in Iran (1970-2010)

Social documentary photography of Iran has a small contribution in representing the problem of subalternity and contrary to the claim of pure depiction, the photographic representation of subalternity relies on social, cultural and political discourses. The aim of this article is to analyze the discourse of subalternity in its photographic representation. For achieving this, the social documentary photos of Iran between the 1970s and 2010s, have been studied by purposive sampling in the qualitative method of discourse analysis. According to Foucault's interpretation it is shown how photography as an institutional apparatus has represented the discourse of Iran’s subalternity which have been formulated by foregrounding some statement in each decade. The results of this article showed that the photographic representation of the discourse of subaleternity can be divided into three distinct periods; First, the representation of the subaltern with the main statement of "proletarit" and "mustazaf" in the social discourse of the 1970s were often called to the scene of the revolution by representing ideal bodies as a symbol of resistance. Second, the representation of the subaltern with the main proposition of "vulnerable class" in the cultural discourse of the 1990s, which often becoming visible in a metamorphosed form in the gallery by the representation of passive and idle bodies with the lost innocence. Third, the representation of the subaltern with the main statement of "abnormal", "less privileged" or "unproductive groups" in the neoliberalism discourse of the 2010s, often became subjugated and invisible as potential criminals by the representation of grotesque and exotic bodies, then being exiled to places far away from the consumer society.