A Comparative Study of Photo and Written History of the Iraq War Imposed on Iran(Between 1980-1982)

The photographic works of the Iran-Iraq war during a period of thirty years from 1980 to 2010 have been published in the form of 80 books in Iran, and a review of the titles of these books shows that all of them include a collection of works based on A period or works of a photographer or a subject have been formed. What has not been addressed in the meantime and has received less attention with caution is the analysis, evaluation and review of the works of war photographers as visual documents of the historical event and the explanation of the visual narrative of this event which has been focused in this research. The reason for choosing the period 1980-82 in this article, is clear for the beginning of the period and refers to the date of the beginning of the war. The professional, spiritual and emotional conflict of the photographers with the event that affected all aspects of people’s lives, after two years from the beginning of the war, reaches an important historical climax, and that is the conquest of Khorramshahr. Until this date, which is the third of June 1982, the best works of photographers are formed at the peak of spiritual and professional interaction with a historical event. Then, just as a historical event enters a long period of erosion, war photography changes from an ideal and motivational activity to a repetitive task, and in fact neither an important photographer nor an important current emerges in War photography takes shape. The main purpose of this article is to compare the content of photographs of the Iran-Iraq war between 1980-82 as visual documents with written documents from the same events that have been published in the form of the calendar of the history of the holy defense. The theoretical approach of insight in this study is based on the analytic history view of Robin George Collingwood and the method of analyzing content that has qualitative and quantitative qualities combined in summative content analysis. The period of research from the beginning of the war to the conquest of Khorramshahr is about 22 months, and 667 photographs have been selected from the series of “imposed war” volumes. In the written history section, the collection of “Holy Defense History Calendar” series was reviewed by the Army Armed Forces Holy Defense Research Center in the form of a 17039 reference page. After identifying and extracting visual and textual categories, the illustrated history and the written history of the war are compared. The results of this research show that both the photographs contain some concepts and messages independent of the written text, as well as some information that the written text does not exist in the photographs and cannot be presented in the picture. Generally, imposed war photographs are mainly the domain of determined concepts and the revealing of emotions and internalities, and the written text in most cases uses the ability to process historical information and design undetermined concepts.