The Bam Project, Iran
The Bam Project began in response to the earthquake that flattened the ancient city in south east Iran and killed 30,000 people. This happened in the early hours of the morning, on December 26th 2003.
In October 2004, Picture People, alongside British NGO Merlin and Swiss NGO Terre des Hommes gave 100 men, women and children Kodak cameras to photograph their lives one year after the disaster. This produced hundreds of deeply meaningful images and stories. We decided to continue into another year, and then a third, with the intention of continuing until 2010 (the seventh anniversary of the earthquake).
This has become a unique project, unique to Iran, and unique to the world. It is a project that opens up the lives of ordinary Iranian people to a wider audience, inspiring many who participate and view. The photos you will see are unpretentious and real images of life in Bam City over the four years of the ongoing project. The Project has been supported generously by Kodak, The British Council, Target Follow, Support to Life and the Popli Khalatbari Charitable Foundation.
Each year a new theme is given to the participants of Bam. They have been, ‘One Year After’; ‘Change’, ‘Work and Play’; ‘Friends and Family’ and ‘Ashura’. The people of Bam write narratives of life in Bam alongside these themes. Combined with their photos are the involvement of Iranian Photographers from Tassvir Image, who photographed Bam ‘Three Days’ after the earthquake. Seiffollah Samadian has made a film called ‘Three Days and Ten Days’. Parisa Damandan, a very special person dug through the rubble and the remains of the photo studios, to rescue over 20,000 negatives and prints – ‘Preserving Bam’s Past’, and Michael Winterbottom of Revolution Films has contributed his unused footage of Bam that he shot for the award winning film ‘In This World’. Nevil Mountford, the producer of the project has contributed each year photos and films, among them, ‘The Taxi Driver’, as well as individual photo stories of people in Bam City.
The Bam Project contains so much creative work, from people living and working today, and from anonymous individuals who may have died during the earthquake. These anonymous individuals are represented by Parisa’s amazing archive.
The Bam Project has been displayed in London, Istanbul, Bam and Kerman, as well as online at www.picturepeople.org It has also been published in The Guardian, The Telegraph, and online at BBC, as well as other websites.
Tehran Show, September 2007
For the new exhibition, Picture People would like to exhibit 48 photos by the people of Bam (12 from each year), plus 48 images from Parisa’s archive (the images chosen will be similar to the photos taken by the people of Bam over the four projects, as there are uncanny resemblances to photos taken after, and those taken before), plus Tassvir’s photos from the three days after. We would also like to include portraits taken each year of the participants and their families, and their stories. We would also like to show the four films that will be re-edited to their full lengths for the show (Samadian will be adding his ‘Nine Months and One Year’ to his older film. And finally we would like to exhibit photos from a new school built by the Popli Khalatbari Charitable Foundation, which will become the ‘home’ for the Bam Project.
When you look at the Bam photos taken by a widow, or a taxi driver, or an orphan or a butcher, even a shepherd or a banker, you see details of what is important in their lives. We hope that people who see these photos, will understand how similar in life we all are, despite geographical, cultural, religious or linguistic differences. The people of Bam lost everything that was precious to them in that earthquake, but they quickly realised that life must be rebuilt. And in the days, months and years that followed the earthquake, that is exactly what Bami people did – they rebuilt. In many ways this project is a photographic testimony to the ‘rebuilding of life, and the lives of others’ in one city, in one part of the world.
This project is the product of a journey through humanity. The journey is the communication of people’s hopes and dreams through photography. This exhibition is the product of the first journey to Bam, and one that has led to so many others.
This exhibition has been made by the people of Bam, for every single person that died, and for all that survived.
Picture People, March 2007