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Filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s photographic works employ contemplative and philosophical themes

SETTING OFF A trend that was cultural, dynamic and intellectual, the Iranian New Wave movement in Iranian cinema gave birth to pioneers and some notable figures that made innovative art films with highly political and philosophical tones and poetic language. From this generation emerged one of the true masters of contemporary cinema, Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami.

Abbas Kiarostami is known around the world for his acclaimed filmmaking. In 1997 he won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for The Taste of Cherry and also received the Akira Kurosawa Lifetime Achievement Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Basement art gallery is presenting an exhibition of selected photographic works from one of his celebrated series ‘Roads and Trees’ on which he has been concentrating since the mid-1990s.

The moving image and photographic work of Kiarostami is characterised by a distinct personal style, employing contemplative, philosophical themes coupled with a lyrical translation of neo-realism into modernist terms. The relationship between his films and his photographs seems to be an equally informative dialogue. "While photography is not necessarily an incitation to daydreaming, it can be,” says Abbas Kiarostami.

“If dreaming consists of fleeing the city and its constraints, if dreaming means going back to sources – and, therefore, to nature – then photographing nature can be considered an incitation to dreaming. For someone who was born in an apartment and who is used to towering buildings, cars, traffic jams, underground tunnels, the language of advertising and whose life takes place beneath a grey and cloudy sky, nature has a whole other signification. In my opinion, this nature here is the opposite of human nature and its needs. We often have a tendency to forget this reality."The aesthetically pleasing exposures are not strict storyboards for Kiarostami's films, nor are they stills, yet they are clearly akin to the panorama and atmosphere that exists in his filmmaking. From the city of Teheran he travels, sometimes North, towards the Caspian Sea, and sometimes as far as Kurdistan, near the Iraqi border and captures the picturesque views that are contemplative, clearly for Kiarostami at the time they were taken, as well as for the viewer, in their stillness and simplicity.

EVENT DETAILS

Exhibition Roads runs until November 8 at the Basement art gallery, Dubai.

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