Born Tehran, Iran, 1945. Died Tehran, 2010
'Image of Imagination'
British Museum: 2009, 6036.1
Art Fund Collection of Middle Eastern Photography at the V&A and the British Museum
© Rana Javadi
Jalali was a photographer and teacher who played a leading role in collecting and preserving historical photographs in Iran. He was an influential teacher, mentored many of the younger generation of Iranian photographers, and was instrumental in setting up Tehran’s first Museum of Photography (also known as Akskhaneh Shahr).
In this montage he layered Qajar-period (1786–1925) portraits and an enlarged detail of an old photographic studio sign that had been crossed out with red paint. Jalali speculated that this defacement occurred during the Islamic revolution (1978–9), perhaps as an attack on a studio where unveiled women had been photographed.