The Rest Is History - Revolutions: Iran, the Prague Spring, and Ceaușescu’s Fall | History in Photos

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

**Unlock the full episode and the complete History in Photos series by joining The Rest Is History Club at⁠ ⁠⁠therestishistory.com⁠** In what ways did Abbas’ identity grant him unique access to the Iranian Revolution? How can a single object, like Josef Koudelka’s wristwatch, symbolise an entire geopolitical shift like the Prague Spring? And, how does Moises Saman’s photographic approach to the Arab Spring differ from traditional revolutionary photography? In today’s episode of our new member’s-only mini-series, Dominic is joined by photographer Chris Floyd to discuss iconic photographs of political revolutions of the 20th and 21st century. Sign up to our free newsletter at therestishistory.com/newsletter! Getty Images has one of the largest and oldest privately held archives globally with access to over 150 million images dating back to the beginning of photography. From historical images created in the early 1800s to more contemporary 1990s imagery, the Getty Images archive houses a wealth of socially significant, historical photos, videos and prints, and includes content from over 40 editorial content partners including Gamma-Rapho, Paris Match, The Bettmann Archive, Sygma and Motorsport Images. Our archive video collection contains 3.1 million hours of offline video footage and includes partners such as NBC News Archives, ITN, Sky News and the BBC Motion Gallery. _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editors: Jack Meek, Harry Swan + Adam Thornton Social Producer: Harry Balden Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude Senior Producer: Callum Hill Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi everybody, welcome to the Restis History. It's Dominic here and I'm thrilled to be unveiling our latest exclusive mini-series for our Restis History Club members. We will be plunging into the history of photography and in particular what photography tells us about history. I'm joined by my friend the great portrait photographer Chris Floyd who is going to be talking us through some particular historical moments. So we'll be looking at revolutions, the Arab Spring, the Prague Spring, the Revolution in Romania in 1989. We'll be talking about music. So the blues, David Bowie and so on.

We'll be looking at fashion and the role that photography has played in the transformation of fashion. And finally, we'll be talking about technology. How technology has changed photography and how photography has in turn affected the way that we see history. So this is a brilliant series.

It's a lot of fun. We would love as many people as possible to join up and to see this series with me and Chris, talking about some of the most iconic images in recent history. And in this first episode, we are looking at revolutions. And here is a lovely little clip. Iran.

Right. We're back to Iran again. Yeah. So, 1979. So what I've really tried to do with these is give you, if you're interested in this subject, who is the photographer that best defines that subject? Right. And I've picked one photographer for each of the four revolutions that we're going.

We're going to cover here. So Iran, 79, the person you really want to look at is a man called, where he was known by a singular name, Abbas. Right. His full name was Abbas Atar, but he's known professionally as Abbas. He's born in 1944. I mean, really, his life's work really was documenting the effect of religion on people. Yeah, isn't that interesting?

So he's Iranian himself, right? He was born in Iran, but he left Iran and then he grew up in Algeria. and then he returned to Iran during the... I mean, as an adult, he lived most of his life in Paris. And after he documented the sort of 7980 Iranian Revolution, he really, he was exiled really. And he didn't go back to Iran until, I think, 1997 was the next time he went back. But 7980, he really was, he seemed to be everywhere.

I mean, we've got five pictures of his here. But he seemed to be everywhere and covering everything. which, you know, for a huge country like geographically, you know, physically huge country like Iran is quite something. So this is the Ayatollah. He's second from right. Yes. And he is Khomeini. He's calling upon Ayatollah Sharia to Madari to appease tensions between their respective followers.

That is as much as I know about this bit. You know, I'm really picking pictures that really convey the tension and drama of it. So this is, Khomeini has been back for just under a year. And actually, I suppose the fact that the fact that, the, the fact that, telling that story is a reminder that actually for the first, oh, actually for years, for about the first two or three years of the revolution, the revolution is in complete flux. Nobody knows necessarily the hominy is going to win and what role he's going to play in the new regime. And there are other power brokers, I guess, other riotolers.

I mean, it's similar in a way to the Russian revolution, isn't it, in that all those factions after the, of 1917. Yeah, it's not obvious. It's obvious to us now, looking back, that we impose a pattern on it, that we think, okay, these guys are obviously always going to win. but nobody knows this at the time. And there are different Islamic groups. There are different groups of Majahidin kind of fighting for the streets and whatnot. And how does, I mean, the fact that Abbas is in the room.

Yeah, that's the astonishing thing, but he's in the room because he's in the room here. And then at some point, I mean, that's six months later that he's out in the desert with this, you know, when the US tried to rescue the hostages, which will come to in a minute. But he's all over the place. You know, he's obviously,

really well, well connected and fed with information. You know, how he got into that room, I don't, I have no idea. Yeah. But the fact that they, they let him in and they also, you know, he was able to photograph, not only photograph this, but also he got out and he got the, he got the film out. You know, this is so much of this, these revolution pictures are about people who have to smuggle film. Yeah.

Out, not only out of a room, but out of a country. Yeah. You know. But in his case, it surely makes a massive difference that he's Iranian, that he's born in Iran. Yeah. So he has two cards to play with the regime, I guess, that a Western photographer would not have to. Yeah.

But he obviously, he didn't, he didn't endear himself to the Khomeini regime after that. Because, you know, he was exiled and went off to live in Paris for 17 years. So should we look at some of the other photos that he took? So we did Operation, the Operation in the Desert Operation Eagle Claw. Eagle Claw, Colonel Charlie Beckwith. and his attempt to rescue the hostages with Delta Force obviously disaster for the Americans

and a disaster for Jimmy Carter's presidency and actually I hadn't seen this until you showed it to me it's not terribly well known so he went out to the desert and there really is in the middle of nowhere you look at it on Google Maps and took a photograph of the wreckage of the helicopter

I guess it's an image of humiliation for the United States Yeah it is, isn't it? For the Americans it's absolutely about the humiliation I mean it just best laid plans and all that so And just as a name of the United States. image. It's the image of the crashed wreckage against the emptiness

I guess at the desert and the huge wide horizon. But I wonder if they came, because there's not a lot of the actual body of the helicopter there. Do you think they would have come, they came back and destroyed, because the Americans, I've always got technology that's better than everybody else's. Oh no, they didn't

go back. They didn't go back. No, they didn't go back. They just, I mean, that's the amazing thing. They abandoned the stuff, but also in the helicopter, were the plans of the mission. Right. And the Iranians were able to get the kind of charred fragments of paper and exhibit them to the world. Oh, I didn't know that. That bit I didn't know.

Yeah. I mean, it could not have been a greater catastrophe. And then you've got another image from the US Embassy, haven't you, where the hostages are being kept. Yeah, this is mob in front of the embassy. Researching this and looking at a lot of revolution pictures, one of the themes that comes up again and again and again is mobs. Yeah. And after a while of looking at this, I realized that one mob is kind of pretty much the same as any

the mob. The thing about the mob, right, that becomes the image for the, certainly for the Americans of the Iranian Revolution. I think the reason the Iranian Revolution had such an impact on U.S. domestic opinion was the otherness of it. So it's men with beards. You know, we've got the forbidding-looking priests and the sort of clerics in the photo with the Ayatollahs.

And then this picture, it's the sort of frenzy of it that I think for people, you know, if you're sitting in Wisconsin, watching on TV. or something or opening on newspaper. That's what people found unsettling because they didn't appreciate that the, I guess the strength of feeling, the fervor against the Shah, but also the religious dimension.

Abbas was specialised him. But how did the Ayatollah, how was it possible for them to enable this kind of, to channel this rate? Because one of the things you read a lot about is how, you know, Iranians are Persians. Yeah. They're not Arabs.

Yeah. How was he able to kind of take this, find this sort of Islamic thurver within a country that's Persian and not

Oh well I think their particular brand of Islam So Shia The fact that they're embattled And they're surrounded

by Sunnis is obviously very important to explaining Iranian mentality And it's It's where I think religion and nationalism

kind of fuse Yeah These protests These enormous Street demonstrations Have been going While he was in exile So they've been

building and building every 40 days in 1978 with the funerals of the last people who'd been shot, then there would be another 40 days later, huge crowds on the streets, the Shah's secret police would shoot some more people. And that meant that 40 days later there will be another set of funerals and another of these enormous sort of outpourings of rage. And I think some of the energy, to me,

comes from the contrast between these people who are so fired up and are so, there's such passion and such a sort of loss of control. in a way. And then that is being focused through somebody who is the incarnation of austerity and control. You know, the Hattollah, when Khomeini returns at the beginning of 1979, and he says famously on the plane to Peter Jennings, as he's coming in, Peter Jennings says, what do you feel? What are you feeling? And he says, I feel nothing. And there's something about the sort of the coldness, the self-control, then in a weird way, well, it makes him kind of otherworldly. It makes him seem holy. And I think that almost...

The fact that he's not giving into the same passions that they are, it makes him in even greater focus for excitement. People do view him as a kind of holy man. And as the emblem of a kind of unchanging, authentic Iran that the Shah had betrayed, I guess. The Shah was too Western and the Shah was corrupt and all of these kinds of things. And so people projected all of this onto the sort of what it appeared to be, the kind of blank slate of how many.

And then he was, you know, I think it's under a, appreciated how pragmatic, how calculating, how cold-blooded he was in kind of using that, tapping it, eliminating his rivals and building his power. Because the other thing you also get from this, I sense, is that it takes actually quite a small, in a population, it takes quite a small percentage of people. Yeah. If they are fervent enough, motivated enough. You know, it's like if you look at politics in Western Europe now, it's really a very small number of people

that are passionate enough to really want to join a political party these days. Yeah, of course. And it's that thing. If you have a small number of people who are committed and willing to go all the way, you can do a lot. Of course. You can do a lot. The crowds are enormous, though.

I mean, the crowds are vast. I mean, we're talking about millions of people, sometimes on the streets. I mean, it really is, I think he taps something. It's not just about a small group of extremists. I think he tapped something, a sense that, you know, the country had changed so much in the previous 10 years, things spiraling out of control and people yearned for a kind of

reassurance traditional they sort of traditional values a sense of solidarity all of those kinds of things they felt that he and his sort of faction offered what about the last photo that you've got of Abbas

this is armed mullahs marching past the Ithollah's house I think what I like about this so there were lots of photos taking the Iranian Revolution I mean photographers were always drawn to the women in their kind of black cloaks and their Khadors. I mean, so much of the sort of,

the imagery of that was really unsettling to Westerners because they saw it as part of the oppression of women, more not understandably. But it's interesting how prominent women are often now in these photos, isn't it? Yeah, Abbas has a lot of great pictures of Iranian women. Yeah.

You know, all dressed more often than not like that. There's a very, there's a great picture we took of them doing target practice. Yeah, with the guns. Yeah. I think what's unsettling about it is the display of austerity, visual austerity, isn't it?

I mean, everything about that picture represents a form of austerity, doesn't it? Nobody's smiling. Yeah. Everybody's grim-faced. Yeah. Can I ask one more question about the Bass and his photographs, the Iranian Revolution? How important is it, do you think that they are black and white? It's the black and white images that seem to linger in the mind, isn't it?

I mean, yeah, because it's essentially they're monotonal scenes, aren't they? You know, there's people in black. Yeah. And white. And there's very little color there, you know. If you look at the color one, I mean, I mean, there's no actual colour. I mean, there's a tiny flash of blue somewhere here.

Yeah, yeah, everyone's in black. I mean, that's it. Everyone else is in black. Can I just ask you a quick question before we move on to the next revolution? So the tension between black and white and color and photography, by and large, why is it that that a photographer now would choose black and white? Because so many of the photographs that we're going to be looking at are black and white, and they're taking an age when color was possible.

Yeah. So why do photographers, what's that choice as a photographer? Well, there's a combination of practical things, one which was, you could, process and print, print black and white film much more easily. Right. In a hotel room bathroom. You can build a dark room in a hotel room bathroom and process and print. Color is much, much, much more difficult to do.

And then also, you know, you have things like newspapers of the time, you know, apart from your things like Time magazine and Life magazine, you know, most newspapers then didn't really print color. No, of course. Today, 1986. Eddie Shah was the first British newspaper in color. You know, so until then, there was actually no need for it. You know, if you're supplying hard news, which is fundamentally what a lot of this is,

yeah. There's no market for it to be. Okay, one other question, which is, I never occurred to me before until you were just talking. So somebody like Abbas who goes to Iran to do these photos or indeed the people who go to Vietnam or whatever, they're never doing this really with a book in mind particularly. They're thinking about short-term clients, as in, I will sell these to the Time magazine or the Washington Post or whoever. that's the plan and if the book does come of that that's an accident that comes later but the point is the sort of the short term transaction.

I think some of these people were probably much more focused on documenting things because they felt that they needed to be documented. They were driven by, not necessarily driven by the daily grind of supplying an image to the paper. I think Abbas is someone who was drawn to religious projects. his whole lot where he was drawn to religious projects. I mean, he did projects on Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism. Yeah. I mean, he did a seven-year project on militant Islam.

Yeah. On jihadism. Yeah. After 9-11. He spent seven years documented that in 16 countries. Yeah. Wow. So it becomes a sort of passion project as much as anything.

And almost probably quite addictive that you seek out for another conflict or you seek out. Because there's always more to do, isn't there? Thank you for listening or watching if you were indeed watching. Now, if you want to see the rest of the... that episode and the other episodes that are coming in this tremendous series in the next three weeks, then all you need to do is to head to the rest is history.com and sign up to join the club. And not only will you get this terrific series with me and Chris Floyd, you will get a host of unbelievable benefits.

Now Chris and I, we're back next week to talk about photography and music. So make sure you come back for that and don't miss out. And on that bombshell, bye-bye.