【聯合報／By ELAINE SCIOLINO／陳世欽譯】
Rare Glimpses of Tehran’s Long-Gone Red-Light District
PARIS — Kaveh Golestan was 52 on the bright spring day he died. He was killed in a minefield in northern Iraq in 2003 while working as a cameraman with the BBC.
Many journalists who encountered Mr. Golestan over his long career knew him as a hard-news photographer and cameraman. He was one of the finest chroniclers of the 1979 Islamic revolution that overthrew the shah of Iran, his native country; the nearly eight-year Iran-Iraq war; and Saddam Hussein’s gassing of the Kurds. His photographs of the revolution won him the Robert Capa Gold Medal.
What is less known is that in the years before the revolution, when Iran was still a Westernized monarchy, Mr. Golestan recorded in stark black-and-white the daily lives of those in Iran with nothing. An exhibition of one of his most dramatic subjects — prostitutes confined to Tehran’s red-light district known as the Citadel of Shahr-e No (New City) — is being shown in the Foam Photography Museum in Amsterdam through May 4. The complete collection of 61 images will appear as part of a larger photographic, painting and film exhibition on Iran entitled “Unedited History: Iran 1960- 2014,” at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris from May 16 to August 24.
The Citadel was an old neighborhood of filthy alleyways in Tehran that was established in the 1920s as a red-light district to house scores of prostitutes. In the 1930s and 1940s, the neighborhood became a thriving sex quarter with rampant crime. Female prostitutes walked the streets seminaked.
After the 1953 C.I.A.-led coup that reinstated the shah, the authorities walled off the area, turning it into a ghetto whose inhabitants were almost exclusively female prostitutes and their children; only men were allowed to access it through an iron gate.
By the 1970s, about 1,500 prostitutes worked in the Citadel, and most of them lived there. Their daughters often followed them into prostitution; their sons often turned to drugs.
In the ghetto, there was a health center, a police station, a social-work office and a crude education service that taught basic reading and writing to women and their children. But the women suffered — from poverty, violence and destitution.
Mr. Golestan’s work is the only existing photographic document of the Citadel. It first appeared in the daily Ayandegan newspaper in 1977; some of the photographs were included in a book of his photographs on Iran (“Kaveh Golestan 1950-2003: Recording the Truth in Iran”) published after his death.
Mr. Golestan took notes on everything he photographed, and alongside the photographs, the exhibition will include excerpts from his diaries, newspaper clippings and audio interviews that he conducted in and about the area. The Citadel, he wrote, “confines some of Tehran’s prostitutes within its walls, like a detention center with a tight beehive of tiny cells.” He added, “The lives of the residents have plummeted to the lowest depths of human existence.”
He forged friendships with many of the women, photographing them regularly between 1975 and 1977. Ceilings leak , mattresses are threadbare , and plaster and paint are peeling. The place looks as if it smells of rot.
As the revolution unfolded, mobs set fire to sites they considered symbols of decadence, including the Citadel.
Most of the women are believed to have escaped . Some of the women were imprisoned and executed by firing squads; others were arrested and “reformed” according to Islamic revolutionary principles. The Citadel site was bulldozed as an act of cultural cleansing and in its place a park with a lake was built.
“You look at these photos and these women are looking right back at you and you have the feeling you are quite intimate with them,” said Kim Knoppers, the curator of the exhibition at Foam. “You forget the sense of time and place. The photos become universal images, which resonates in Amsterdam. We are so wellknown for our own red-light district.”
Mr. Golestan’s original prints remained in his archive in Iran until about two years ago. Vali Mahlouji, a London-based Iranian curator and a distant cousin of Mr. Golestan’s widow , sought them out to create a complete archive of Mr. Golestan’s work.
“The mission is to bring back and put into circulation artistic work that went underground because of the revolution and the policies that followed,” Mr. Mahlouji said . “We want to create a link between where we were in Iran in the 1960s and 1970s and what happened after Iran’s cultural revolution of the 1980s. We’re starting by putting Kaveh on the artistic map.”
中譯
高爾斯坦在一個明亮的春日離開了這個世界，得年52。2003年某日，他在伊拉克北部為英國廣播公司攝影時，死於一處地雷區。
許多在他長期職業生涯中見過他的記者都知道，他是硬新聞的照片與影片記者。他是1979年他的祖國伊朗推翻國王巴勒維的伊斯蘭革命、將近八年的兩伊戰爭，以及已故伊拉克獨裁者海珊以毒氣殺害庫德人等事件的最佳記錄者之一。他的伊斯蘭革命系列照片為他贏得羅伯‧卡帕金質獎章。
比較不為人知的是，在伊朗革命爆發前幾年，還是西化君主政體時，高爾斯坦以對比強烈的黑白色調記錄伊朗窮人的日常生活。他最具戲劇性的主題之一，被限制在德黑蘭新城堡壘紅燈區的妓女，正在阿姆斯特丹馮姆攝影博物館展出，展至五月四日。完整收集的61張照片，則將在巴黎現代藝術博物館規模更大的伊朗照片、繪畫及影片展覽中展出。展覽名為「未修剪的歷史：伊朗，1960-2014」，5月16日展至8月24日。
堡壘是德黑蘭的骯髒巷弄社區，建於1920年代，充當容納數十名妓女的紅燈區。1930與40年代成為興旺的性交易區，犯罪猖獗。妓女半裸走過街道。
中情局1953年帶頭發動政變協助伊朗國王復辟後，當局封起該區，使它淪為居民幾乎全是妓女及其子女的區域。只准男人透過一道鐵門進入。
1970年代，約1500名妓女在堡壘工作，大多住在那裡。她們的女兒通常也做同樣的工作，兒子則往往以販毒為業。
堡壘有健診中心、警局、社工辦公室各一，另有一初階教育服務設施，教妓女及其子女基本讀寫。然而這些婦女卻飽受貧窮、暴力與窮困煎熬。
高爾斯坦的作品是有關堡壘的現存唯一照片紀錄。1977年它首次出現在「未來報」。部分照片收錄在他死後出版的伊朗照片集「卡維赫‧高爾斯坦，1950-2003：記錄伊朗的事實」中。
高爾斯坦為拍下的每個畫面加註，除了照片，同時也展出他的日記摘要、剪報，以及他在堡壘及其周圍訪談的錄音。他寫道，堡壘「把德黑蘭的部分妓女關在高牆內，有如配置小牢房蜂窩的拘留所」。他又說：「居民生活品質淪落到人類生存的最深淵。」
他與其中許多婦女成了朋友，1975至77年之間定期為她們拍照。天花板漏水；床墊破舊；灰泥與油漆剝落。整個地方看來似乎有股腐臭味。
革命開始後，暴民對他們視為墮落象徵的地方縱火，包括堡壘。
多數婦女應該都逃走了，有些遭槍決隊囚禁、處決，其他婦女則被捕後依伊斯蘭革命原則加以「改造」。堡壘在文化清理下被鏟平，改為有座湖的公園。
馮姆展覽策展人克諾普斯說：「你看著這些照片，照片中婦女也會看著你，讓你覺得與她們非常親近。你忘了時空。這些照片成為普世的影像，並在阿姆斯特丹產生迴響。我們自己的紅燈區也很出名。」
高爾斯坦的原始照片一直留在他在伊朗的檔案中，直到約二年前。倫敦的伊朗裔策展人馬赫洛吉是高爾斯坦遺孀的遠親，找出這些照片後，為他的作品建立完整的檔案。
馬赫洛吉說：「我的任務是把因為革命與其後的政策而銷聲匿跡的藝術作品帶回來，廣為流傳。我們想把我們1960、70年代在伊朗的處境，以及1980年代伊朗文化革命之後的種種連結起來，首先就是把卡維赫（高爾斯坦）放在藝術的地圖上。」
留言列表
