Telex Persan

"Telex Iran" is an extraordinarily personal document of a public event. The photographs Gilles Peress took over a five-week period during 1979-1980 focus on the seizure of the American embassy and a number of hostages in Teheran by student proxy groups of the new Iranian regime. However, the book forms neither a study nor an analysis of that singular event. Peress' photographs do not purport to tell the story - any story - but are the nearly seismographic record of the photojournalist's perceptions, encounters, and not least, his emotions as he moves through the city and the countryside of a nation in upheaval. Involved one day, alienated the next; insightful in Tabriz, at sea in Qom; attracted to one subject, repelled by another, "Telex Iran" beats out the raw rhythms of Iran's dislocations, both historical and individual.