The Study of the Signs of Absence in the History of Family Photos of Iran

What has been represented in family photos in Iran since Naser al-Din Shah’s day thus far, is not all that had happened in reality of the everyday lives of Iranian families, rather some topics and individuals have always been removed from the family photo’s context or have been marginalized. The article, by investigating absent and present signs in the context of family photos through social semiotics in the context of the Iranian society, has answered the following questions:Which signs are recorded in family photos and which signs are forgotten, or are intentionally deleted from the family photo context? What are the reasons for deleting or the absence of these signs in family photos؟ It is obvious that some absent signs in family photos can be attributed to the social, cultural and perceptual structures of any age. This article is a review of the literature of absence, and by indicating the relationship of absence with concepts such as presence, prohibition, death, and memory from the perspective of Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, Christian Metz, and Jacques Fontani, categorizes and defines the signs of absence in family photos. The findings of the research indicate that there have been four types of prohibition in the course of family photos in Iran: thematic prohibition, discourse prohibition, presence prohibition, and media prohibition. In this case, the prohibiting power of social and cultural discourses in elimination and causing absence of individuals in the history of family photos in Iran, has had greater effects than other barriers.