Saturday’s New York Times ran an article written by Robert F. Forth and Nazila Fathi titled, Iran’s Opposition Calls Crackdown ‘Immoral’. The article explores the latest push-back by the opposition movement within Iran. It’s a smart article and required reading for those of us following the political turmoil surrounding the contested election.
Interestingly, the article also mentions world-wide solidarity protests, “In cities around the world on Saturday, protests against the election and its aftermath were held in a campaign coordinated by human rights groups.” While this one line summary doesn’t tell us much, the photo chosen to run with the article totally took my breath away. The photo take by Jacques Brinon/AP ran with the caption, “Parisians held images on Saturday of Neda Agha-Soltan, whose death in Iran demonstrations turned her into a symbol of protest.” The picture is an amazing one, as you can see it shows a crowd of protestors all assuming the identity of the victim Neda Agah-Soltan (slain by the police during a crack-down of the student protests to the Iranian election results) by holding up printed pictures of her face.
Neda Agah-Sultan’s image has been used in protest posters since her tragic death, often depicting still images from a video of her dying along with text. As shocking and painful as those posters and signs are, I find the ability of these new posters of her face and name have the ability to signifying solidarity with the victim and embody her role as a symbol for the ‘every-person’ in Iran a real transcendent moment for design in service to a political movement.
Like
