Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami is among the multi-faceted contemporary artists whose interdisciplinary approach requires a kind of understanding of how he uses and benefits from different fields. He was born in Tehran in 1940 and the first medium that Kiarostami experienced was painting, so his entry into the world of image was accompanied by a painterly expression, and this issue had a significant impact on his other works for many years to come. By entering the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Tehran, he learned graphic design in a university and worked in this field until the last days of his life. From the mid-60s, along with painting and graphic design, he worked in cinema and in its various parts, including making titles, designing film posters, and finally making films. In all these fields, several factors, including university education, in-depth literary studies and awareness of the visual and verbal past of Iran, his connection and knowledge of Western visual culture, and mastery of various fields, made him distinct from his peers. Kiarostami also started photography from the mid-70s through cinema, and gradually his photos showed a more mature expression and a great expansion in natural landscapes. Most of Kiarostami's views in his photos are a kind of poetic landscape, the simplicity of nature, showing the vastness, etc. Although, in terms of figurative expression, his elements are sometimes limited to a few simple elements such as snow, rain, tree, mountain, etc., but through these simple and figurative visual elements, he moves towards semantic entanglement, which in this article, following the sign-semanticists, we call a kind of style of living / life that depicts figurative expressions and moves towards a kind of social life. Indeed, his social method, which is a kind of loneliness, is considered a reaction and recognition in relation to a society in which man plays the main and fundamental role. In this way, Kiarostami's style of life, which is the personalization of his social view, is a kind of entry into the hidden layers of loneliness, its multiplication and reproduction. In addition to photographs, paintings, and poster design, he was among the most influential artists emerging from the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults. It is worth mentioning that in addition to his numerous visual activities, he was also active in the field of literature and had a deep connection with literary expression. After years of effort in image and word, he passed away in 2016 at the age of 76.

Sohrab Ahmadi