Abbas took over nine trips to Mexico during the 1980s to capture a cultural landscape torn between ancient traditions and contemporary society
Abbas
"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"
- Abbas
An Iranian born in 1944 and transplanted to Paris, Abbas dedicated himself to documenting the political and social life of societies in conflict. In his major work from 1970 onward, he covered wars and revolutions in Biafra, Bangladesh, Northern Ireland, Vietnam, the Middle East, Chile, Cuba, and South Africa during apartheid.
Abbas photographed the revolution in Iran from 1978 to 1980 and returned in 1997 after 17 years of voluntary exile. Iran Diary 1971–2002 (2002), his book photographed and written as a private journal, is a critical interpretation of Iranian history. During his years of exile, Abbas traveled constantly. Between 1983 and 1986, he journeyed through Mexico and attempted to photograph the country as a novelist might write about it. The resulting exhibition and book, Return to Mexico: Journeys Beyond the Mask (1992), helped define his photographic aesthetic.
From 1987 to 1994, he focused on the resurgence of Islam throughout the world. Allah O Akbar: A Journey Through Militant Islam (1994), the subsequent book and exhibition spanning 29 countries and 4 continents, attracted special attention after the 9/11 attacks by Islamic jihadists. A later book, Faces of Christianity: A Photographic Journey (2000), and touring show, explored Christianity as a political, ritual and spiritual phenomenon.
Abbas’s concern with religion led him to begin a project on animism in 2000. In the resulting book, Sur la route des esprits (2005), he sought to discover why non-rational ritual had re-emerged in a world increasingly defined by science and technology.
On the first anniversary of 9/11, he started a 7-year, 16-country project on jihadism. The work was published in the book In Whose Name? (2009). From 2008 to 2010, he traveled and photographed the world of Buddhism for his book Les Enfants du lotus, Voyage chez les bouddhistes (2013). In 2011, he began a similar long-term project on Hinduism, which concluded in the book Gods I’ve Seen (2016). Before his death, Abbas was working on documenting Judaism around the world.
A member of Sipa from 1971 to 1973, then of Gamma from 1974 to 1980, Abbas joined Magnum Photos in 1981 and became a full member in 1985. He died in Paris on April 25, 2018, at the age of 74.
