The Meaning of Meaningless 

Looking at the photographs of Ahmad Aali has always taught me something new. Yet from the very first photograph of his that I saw until now, there has been a fundamental and enduring quality in his work that continues to feel fresh and worthy of reflection. Ironically, it may seem easy to grasp at first glance, but it possesses a depth that not only escapes a description such as “form experimentation,” but also resists my attempts to write about it except through simplification and reduction.

As far as my limited knowledge and imperfect memory allow me to judge I have rarely encountered in contemporary Iranian photography the experiments that combine such freedom with such inquiry and seriousness as those I find in Ahmad Aali’s photographs. Here I dare to look at the images free from the habits that most of the images around us have instilled in me. Aali’s fearlessness gives me the courage to see the boxes and, for a moment, feel that nothing matters except the boxes themselves and the ways a frame can be filled with them and present them; to wonder what other forms those hollow circles might have taken, and how those colored circles and the surrounding shapes became part of the image. The usual role played by words that come along to steer photographs in a particular direction no longer works for me.

For a moment, I free myself from wondering what phrases such as ستاره‌ شهر [the star of the city] or پچ—perhaps meaning whispering—might signify, or how much symbolic weight a photograph can be made to carry. I free myself from all the statements and texts that arrive either to elevate an image or tear it down or as so often happens these days to create a halo of omniscient authority around their authors. My sole concern becomes this: what can be done with these boxes piled up within a rectangular frame?

After experiencing this lightness and the new questions in my mind, I once again, begin to construct meanings out of this very freedom and I try to explain it. It seems that one can never entirely escape the patterns that one’s environment imposes upon them.