Wartime photos by six photographers to be released from national archive
Iran is set to publish photographs by six prominent Iranian photographers documenting the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, drawing on the National Library and Archives of Iran’s digital collection as the country marks its annual Sacred Defense Week, ISNA reported on Wednesday.
The collection features images of battlefields, war-affected areas, funerals and burials of those killed, as well as grieving families.
The photographers are Reza Deghati, Manoochehr Deghati, Kaveh Golestan, Mohammad Farnood, Alfred Yaghoubzadeh and Kamran Jebreili.
Some of the photographers documented events and everyday life in war-affected areas at close range. Their work forms part of the visual record being released through the archive’s digital resources.
Sacred Defense Week begins each year on Sept. 22, marking the start of the Iran-Iraq war, and runs through Sept. 28. In 2026, it falls from Sept. 22 to 28.
The war began on Sept. 22, 1980, when Iraq attacked Iran, and a ceasefire took effect on Aug. 20, 1988, after nearly eight years of fighting.
Iranian war photographers documented more than battlefield operations, helping preserve a visual record of combatants, civilians, damaged cities and the human consequences of the conflict.
Alongside photographers working for media organizations and official institutions, independent photographers also travelled to the front lines and produced their own accounts.
Their photographs became important visual documents of the war, with some published outside Iran. Deghati covered six years of the conflict and won first prize in the news category of World Press Photo in 1983 for a series of Iran-Iraq war images.
Yaghoubzadeh was present at the front from the early years of the war, documenting combatants, destruction and its human impact.
Golestan left an extensive body of work from the 1980-1988 conflict, continuing his documentary approach to social photography.