Juan Vicente Aliaga on Bahman Jalali

Though not a formally trained photographer, for more than four decades Bahman Jalali (born in Tehran, 1944) has recorded historical moments in black-and-white photographs—scenes of which very few other images exist. I am speaking, above all, of “Days of Blood, Days of Fire,” 1978–79, covering sixty-four days in Tehran, from the first mass demonstrations against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi until the army’s withdrawal, leading to the fall of the dictatorship. Similarly, in making the series titled “War between Iraq and Iran,” 1980–88, Jalali visited different