In 1979, growing economic and social tensions in Iran sparked an Islamic Revolution that ended the reign of the Pahlavi shahs and instated Shi’i cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as Iran’s religious and political leader. Before the revolution, Muhammad Reza Shah (r. 1941-1979) tried to convey dynastic and international legitimacy to mass audiences through film, posters, and the press, but distributing images of the unpopular monarchy without effectively reforming failed to win him public support. Anti-Shah demonstrators successfully cultivated a revolutionary visual culture by appropriating the Shah’s official imagery, rallying around Khomeini’s portrait, and emphasizing the Shah’s cruelty. Khomeini gained mass support by permitting Western photojournalism, and as head of the Islamic Republic, he used politically charged imagery to attack political opponents, legitimize the new government, and ground state power in Islam. Khomeini succeeded in legitimizing his rule through imagery where the Shah had failed because Khomeini harnessed the existing beliefs and visual vocabulary of ordinary Iranians.

 

Muhammad Reza Shah used documentary film to depict himself as the rightful leader of a powerful, ancient Iranian nation, demonstrating that he understood imagery as a way to establish legitimacy. In 1971, the Shah hosted an extravagant celebration of the 2500th anniversary of the Iranian monarchy at Persepolis, the ancient capital of the Persian Empire (Cleveland and Bunton 282). The Iranian National Film Board released a film of the celebration titled Forugh-e Javidan (The Eternal Flame of Persia), emphasizing the Shah’s imagined connection to the greatness of pre-Islamic Iran. The film opens with several shots of Muhammad Reza Shah in military regalia, walking in step with Queen Farah, the ten-year-old Crown Prince, and two rows of military personnel toward the tomb of Cyrus the Great, the Persian Empire’s first shah. Close-range shots show the shah saluting the military personnel lining his path to the tomb (Hastings). In these opening moments, the National Film Board portrayed the Shah as a successor of the nation’s founder and as an official of the Iranian state, engaged in the military protection of his people. Muhammad Reza Shah attempted to bolster royal legitimacy with visual signals of connection to Iran’s past glory and present strength. 

 

Muhamad Reza Shah decorated the anniversary celebration with symbolic motifs to portray the Iranian monarchy as a legitimate power in the twentieth-century global order. The Shah invited leaders from five continents to stay in an opulent resort near the ruins of Persepolis for the anniversary celebration. Forugh-e Javidan describes how the resort was shaped like a five-pointed star, with a wing for leaders from each continent branching out from the shah’s royal pavilion. A close-range shot one minute later in the film shows that the five-pointed star surrounding a circular center also appeared on drums played during the celebrations (Hastings). This symbol presented the Iranian monarchy as a nexus of world powers, including the People’s Republic of China, the Soviet Union, and the United States. At the paramount display of monarchical power, Muhammad Reza Shah used visual motifs to portray himself as an important, legitimate ruler in relation to global superpowers.

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Muhammad Reza Shah performed in Forugh-e Javidan to communicate legitimacy to a wide audience, but the presentation of these images alienated ordinary Iranians. After the opening procession toward the tomb of Cyrus the Great, credits in Persian and French cross the screen while American writer Orson Welles narrates (Hastings). The language of the credits and high-profile narration indicates that this vision of the monarchy was directed toward Western viewers and the Iranian elite, who were educated in European languages or at least supported cultural exchange with the West. International and internal audiences criticized the $100-million production, though, noting the Shah’s apparent alienation from the economic and social issues that many ordinary Iranians blamed on Western interference (Cleveland and Bunton 282). The Shah intended to construct an image of legitimate leadership for an adoring audience, but distributing this pageantry in ways that suited his own sensibilities highlighted economic and cultural disparities between classes in Iranian society and fueled animosity toward the Pahlavi regime.

 

The Pahlavi regime distributed posters depicting the Shah as a legitimate ruler, understanding the power of photographs to convey political messages but misjudging how ordinary Iranians would interpret these messages. Large photographs of the Shah, Queen Farah, and the Crown Prince were plastered on public and commercial spaces. Posters depicted the Shah in different roles: military regalia studded with medals emphasized his role as commander-in-chief, glittering royal uniforms displayed his wealth, and formal and casual civilian outfits related him to the cosmopolitan Iranian elite (Chelkowski and Dabashi 142-143). By emphasizing the Shah’s duty, prosperity, and relatability, photographers and graphic designers turned royal portraits into symbols of the regime’s political, economic, and social legitimacy. As soon as the Shah loosened his control over Iran’s media, revolutionary demonstrators defaced his posters, seeing his portrait as a symbol of corruption and cultural elitism, not of stability (Chelkowski and Dabashi 143). The Shah tried to garner public support using specific imagery, but he inadvertently broadcast his inadequacies to working-class Iranians. 

 

Muhammad Reza Shah tried to salvage the monarchy’s public image amid failing health and rising discontent by releasing images of the royal family that he believed promised dynastic stability, but he failed to win public favor because these visual promises were not followed by effective policy change. By the fall of 1977, Muhammad Reza Shah was terminally ill with cancer. The Shah rarely appeared in newspapers and on television during this period, and he appeared frail when he was shown. In October 1977, visual media sources began to replace the Shah’s image with “severe, unglamorous” photographs of Queen Farah engaging with the public service (Keddie and Richard 215). When the Shah could no longer use his own portrait to convey royal power, he tried to present a strong, politically engaged, authoritative queen who could rule in his place. Photographs of the wealthy queen could not overcome animosity toward the Pahlavi regime amid rising economic inequality, and the Shah’s final attempt at winning public favor failed (Abrahamian 143). Without effective improvements in most Iranian’s quality of life, the Shah’s strategic images only emphasized his detachment from demonstrators’ needs. 

 

Artists who opposed the Shah appropriated well-known imagery to critique the regime’s political messaging, creating a visual culture that was essential in spreading revolutionary attitudes. Several left-wing professors and students at the University of Tehran’s Fine Arts College formed a collective named Group 57, which opposed the Shah, American intervention, imperialism, and inequality. These dissenters drew on their training in visual arts and well-known political imagery to create posters that they hoped would persuade others of all ideologies to join the revolution (Moss et al. 162). In the years leading up to the revolution, Group 57 artist Nicky Nodjoumi created a poster depicting the military uniformed Shah being thrown into the “garbage bin of history” by a large disembodied hand (Moss et al. 163). Nodjoumi appropriated a ubiquitous image of the Shah, which the Pahlavi regime had propagated, to juxtapose Muhammad Reza’s appearance of military authority with his powerlessness against rising criticism of his actions. Group 57 used existing political imagery to create revolutionary artwork that could affirm and mobilize the discontented masses.   

 

Anti-Shah demonstrators rallied around Ayatollah Khomeini’s portrait, using his uncaptioned image as a symbol for their political goals and religious ideals and of their opposition to the decorated, secular Shah. Michel Lipchitz, a French photographer for the Agence France-Presse, captured a scene from an anti-Shah demonstration on January 1, 1979, one month before revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile in France. Demonstrators carried a portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini wearing the clerical clothing in which he was always depicted (Chelkowski and Dabashi 174). A sea of faces in the foreground are turned toward the portrait, not toward one another, and some demonstrators held red tulips, symbolizing the martyrdom of Imam Husayn in Shi’i tradition, up to the portrait (Chelkowski and Dabashi 41). For the demonstrators, Khomeini’s portrait was a symbol of Islamist opposition, and for Lipchitz, it was a signal of his subjects’ stance that international audiences could quickly understand. The demonstrators rallied around the consistent, recognizable portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini, using imagery to symbolize their ideologies and to unite around a common goal.

 

Revolutionary demonstrators replaced official images of the Shah with those of Khomeini, which fueled growing revolutionary visual culture and strengthened the tie between opposition to the monarchy and support for Khomeini. Immediately after the Shah left Iran on January 16, 1979, some demonstrators cut the Shah’s face out of banknotes and replaced it with an image of Khomeini (Burnett 103). Even after the Shah had fallen from power and left the country, Iranian people and the government could not tolerate his image, which to them represented cruelty and corruption, on currency. Free from the Shah’s control over official visual culture, Khomeini’s supporters sought to legitimize the revolution with parallel portraits. While the Shah had imposed political messages on his people through carefully constructed images, revolutionaries used images to construct a new regime from the ground up.  

 

While portraits of revolutionary leaders were essential in generating support for a new regime, demonstrators’ use of evocative imagery to draw attention to the Shah’s cruelty was just as important in communicating a vision for post-revolution Iran. On January 19, 1979, an anti-Shah demonstrator stood above a crowd wearing a coat on which he had pinned photographs of people executed on the Shah’s orders. Photographs of this demonstrator show that other demonstrators paused their marching to quietly consider the pinned photographs (Burnett 119-121). The demonstrator with the coat visually communicates that he and his fellows are protesting not just in support of Khomeini, as portraits held up in the background suggest, but against the Shah’s violence. Revolutionary demonstrators used emotionally charged imagery to show why they had revolted and what they hoped to leave behind after the revolution.

 

Khomeini allowed Western photojournalists to document the revolution despite his distrust of Western intervention because he recognized the importance of visual media in garnering mass support. On January 26, 1979, Khomeini announced from exile that his supporters in Iran should treat the foreign press as friends, not Western enemies, because Western radio helped disseminate the revolutionary message. After the announcement, Iranian demonstrators helped Burnett, an American photojournalist who had been berated by demonstrators before the announcement, pass a roll of film across the crowd to a French photographer (Burnett 133). Khomeini understood that the international press significantly increased his ability to reach massive audiences, which outweighed his distrust of the West. Before establishing control over a stable revolutionary government and, in turn, Iranian press, Khomeini relied on international photographers to bolster his influence in Iran.

 

Khomeini and his advisors gave Western photojournalists access to private settings because images of Khomeini as a humble leader spread the idea that he would help the Iranian people, not just reign through a cult of personality. After returning from exile on February 1, 1979, Khomeini and his advisors camped out inside Refah School (Burnett 191). After three days of attending laconic press conferences at the school led by an economist named Javad, whom Khomeini had selected to handle foreign press, Burnett convinced Javad to let him photograph inside the school by telling him that the Ayatollah’s wave resembled the Nazi salute. Inside the school, Burnett photographed Khomeini drinking tea on the floor and consulting with his advisors, all in clerical dress, before greeting his adoring supporters out the window (Burnett 199, 202-203). Having seen demonstrators villainize Muhammad Reza Shah and rally around himself using politically charged images, Khomeini understood that photographs associated with Nazism would injure internal and international support. Burnett’s more intimate photographs reframed Khomeini as a humble Islamic leader who wanted to help his followers as opposed to a charismatic autocrat. Khomeini permitted Western photojournalists to capture the revolution in a way that fit his political narrative. 

 

As revolutionary leaders consolidated power, young Iranians transformed Khomeini’s portrait from a sign of dissent to a symbol of the Islamic Republic’s anti-American stance. In November 1979, a group of students who supported Khomeini seized the United States embassy in Tehran and took 57 American foreign service personnel hostage (Cleveland and Bunton 365). On November 27, French photographer Herve Merliac documented students hoisting large portraits of Ayatollah Khomeini above their heads as they demonstrated inside the gate of the Embassy (Merliac). The hostage crisis poisoned relations between Iran and the United States, sowing deep American distrust in Khomeini’s regime (Cleveland and Bunton 365). By raising Khomeini’s portrait at the gate of the American embassy, where Western photographers could easily capture their demonstration, the Iranian student tied Khomeini’s image and animosity toward the United States to the nascent Islamic Republic’s foreign policy. The students understood that imagery could communicate strong political and ideological messages and used photographs to define Iranian attitudes on the international stage.

 

The revolutionary government used simple graphics to turn public opinion against its political opponents, succeeding in dominating political artistic culture because it had associated itself with anti-Western sentiment. In 1981, Khomeini’s government launched a propaganda campaign against left-wing and non-Islamic nationalists, framing dissidents as counter-revolutionaries who, by opposing the Islamic Republic, aligned themselves with foreign aggressors (Chelkowski and Dabashi 175). One poster depicted the hands of the United States, Israel, and the People’s Republic of China controlling a marionette stamped with the logo of left-wing dissident group Mujahedin-e Khalq, which had carried out a wave of terrorist attacks on the new regime’s political and religious leaders (Chelkowski and Dabashi 175; Cleveland and Bunton 366). After this propaganda campaign, left-wing and non-Islamic artists produced noticeably less vibrant posters than Islamist artists (Chelkowski and Dabashi 174). As it had done to villainize the Shah, the revolutionary government used simple graphics to aim existing distrust of foreign interference at internal political opponents and establish the revolutionary government as the only legitimate leader of Iran.

 

The 1979 revolution transformed photography in Iran from a small-scale medium in newsprint and fine arts to an important aspect of social documentary, and the revolutionary regime embraced rising photojournalism to gain legitimacy. In 1981 and 1982, under new government censorship of art that did not directly support Khomeini’s vision of Islamist governance, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts exhibited two photo series depicting impoverished children in rural and impoverished areas of Iran (Azqandi et al. 570-571). The Iranian and French-Iranian photographers behind these exhibitions saw photography as an essential means of social documentary that exposed social issues and condemned the Pahlavi monarchy for abandoning innocent, ordinary Iranians (Azari 572-573). In a period of rigid media control, the revolutionary leaders allowed artwork that justified change and legitimized Khomeini’s populist break from the Shah’s form of leadership. While the Shah tried to win popularity by projecting his own royal power on posters, the revolutionary regime embraced socio-politically committed imagery to gain popularity from the ground up.

 

After consolidating power, the revolutionary government used banknotes to legitimize Khomeini as Iran’s new leader, producing more effective visual signals of legitimacy through juxtaposition with the out-of-touch Pahlavi regime. From 1981 to 1985, Khomeini’s government implemented the Revolutionary Series of banknotes, which depicted not only clerics and religious sites but also crowds of Iranian people holding up portraits of Khomeini (Elhan 128-129). While banknotes of the monarchy depicted the Pahlavi crown and the Shah in dress uniform, legitimizing the regime through displays of individual power, revolutionary banknotes presented Khomeini as a symbol of the people’s interests (Chelkowski and Dabashi 194). The revolutionary government used Khomeini’s portrait to legitimize the Islamic Republic in everyday life.

 

The revolutionary government used images on postage stamps to anchor the state in Shi’a Islam, legitimizing the new regime through religious institutions, not just the power of select individuals. A number of postage stamps depicting the shah with his portrait crossed out and the title “Islamic Republic” stamped across it remained in circulation after the 1979 revolution (Chelkowski and Dabashi 214). By the early 1980s, the revolutionary regime had the administrative ability to issue stamps depicting Shi’i leaders. Unlike the stamps of the Pahlavi era, which depicted dynastic power and royal wealth to convey stability, the Islamic Republic’s stamps aimed to convey stability by Islamizing Iranian nationalism (Abrahamian 140-141). Both the Pahlavi and revolutionary regimes used imagery on stamps to demonstrate their power, but the Islamic Republic more effectively bolstered its legitimacy by associating the power of the state with Shi’i religious identity. 

 

The revolutionary government combined emotive images of contemporary events with Islamic symbols to appropriate political action into support for the Islamic state, subtly manipulating how familiar scenes were understood to cement Islamist power. Throughout the 1980s, the revolutionary regime issued stamps with increasingly abstract and stylized images of the revolution and Islamic power (Abrahamian 182). During the Iran-Iraq war, women participated in spontaneous street rallies to grieve fallen soldiers, who had been sent to die for the Shi’i community as vengeance for Hussein’s martyrdom at Karbala. In 1985, the Islamic Republic’s government released stamps depicting a woman in a blood-red chador above a crowd of women demonstrators. The woman in red holds her hand up toward a flagstaff shaped like the hand of Abbas, Hussein’s half-brother. Her position matches an image of Khomeini held by one of the women in black (Chelkowski and Dabashi 216-217). In this instance of everyday nationalism, the revolutionary government grounded women’s political activity in Shi’i tradition and Khomeini’s cult of personality, transforming scenes of pain into scenes of support for the Islamic Republic’s agenda. The revolutionary government used small, frequently seen images to reinforce an acceptable form of women’s rallying that supported the Islamic Republic’s religious and political goals.

 

Muhammad Reza Shah and the Pahlavi regime used symbolic pageantry and visual media to project an image of legitimate authority, but strategic imagery alone could not overcome rising discontent. Iranian anti-Shah demonstrators undermined royal imagery by appropriating it into artistic critiques, replacing it with Khomeini’s portrait, and displaying images of the Shah’s cruelty, gradually developing a revolutionary visual culture. Khomeini used Western media to reach wide audiences, helping his portrait become synonymous with the Iranian state on the international stage. As the revolutionary government consolidated power, it controlled political art to bolster the legitimacy of the Islamist government. Once stable, the government of the Islamic Republic used banknotes and stamps to cultivate nationalism surrounding Ayatollah Khomeini and his distinction from the deposed Shah.