IRNA - An art exhibition titled ‘Abbas Chronicles of the World’ featuring 133 works by the late Iranian war photographer Abbas Attar, better known by his mononym Abbas, is underway at Museo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, Spain.


The exhibition, which will run until October 28, pays homage to six decades of activities of the photographer of Magnun Agency in the first retrospective after his recent death.

About his photography Abbas wrote, “My photography is a reflection, which comes to life in action and leads to meditation. Spontaneity — the suspended moment — intervenes during action, in the viewfinder. A reflection on the subject precedes it.

A meditation on finality follows it, and it is here, during this exalting and fragile moment, that the real photographic writing develops, sequencing the images. For this reason a writer’s spirit is necessary to this enterprise. Isn’t photography ‘writing with light?’

But with the difference that while the writer possesses his word, the photographer is himself possessed by his photo, by the limit of the real which he must transcend so as not to become its prisoner.”

Cultural and Tourism Advisor of Valladolid Municipality Ana Redondo who accompanied the wife and children of the late photographer said that Attar displayed the drama of wars from different perspectives.

His son Arash said that his father knew two kinds of war photography: War photography and conflict photography with the former focusing on the bullet and the latter understands the war as a complicated phenomenon investigating its effects on society, politics and economics.

Arash said that the exhibition, divided into nine sections, is of high significance to his family since it is a summary of the artistic life of his father.

Attar was known for his photojournalism in Biafra, Vietnam and South Africa in the 1970s, and for his extensive essays on religions in later years. He was a member of Sipa Press from 1971 to 1973, a member of Gamma from 1974 to 1980, and joined Magnum Photos in 1981, becoming its member in 1985.

He died on April 25, 2018 at the age of 74 due to cancer.