Hengameh Golestan: The Women Who Said No

Hengameh Golestan was born in Tehran in 1952 and became one of the few women working professionally as a photographer in Iran in the 1970s.

Her work often focused on women and everyday life, but in March 1979 history suddenly unfolded directly in front of her.

The Iranian Revolution had only just ended. Many women had participated in it, believing they were helping to build a freer society.

Then, on March 7, Ayatollah Khomeini announced that women working in government offices should observe Islamic dress. The response was immediate.

The following day was International Women’s Day.

On March 8, 1979, more than 100,000 women gathered in the streets of Tehran to protest the move toward compulsory hijab and the loss of rights they feared would follow.

Golestan was 26 years old.

She took her camera and went into the streets.

She later remembered feeling that it was her responsibility to photograph what was happening. Over the course of the demonstrations, she exposed around twenty rolls of film.

The Iranian press refused to publish the photographs.

But she kept them.

She would not give up her choice

In one photograph, a woman stands face-to-face with a man.

Her arm is raised. She points as she speaks. Around them, other people watch.

We cannot hear the argument, but we do not need to.

The photograph is not simply about hijab. It is about a woman insisting that the decision belongs to her.

History repeats

Another photograph pulls us away from the individual and shows the scale of what happened.

Women fill the street far beyond the camera’s view.

More than forty years later, Iranian women would again walk into the streets demanding control over their own bodies and lives.

In 2022, after the death of Jina Mahsa Amini following her arrest by Iran’s morality police, protests spread across the country under the words:

Woman, Life, Freedom.

Women removed and burned their headscarves. Young people confronted authorities. Once again, compulsory hijab became both a law being resisted and a symbol of something much larger.

Looking at Golestan’s photograph from 1979 today, the distance between the two generations suddenly feels very small.

The women are different.

The demand is painfully familiar.

Bravery unleashed

In the third photograph, women have climbed onto a vehicle above the crowd.

There is no formal stage.

They do not need one.

They have found a place from which they can speak and be seen.

That may be one of the most powerful things in Golestan’s photographs: these women do not appear passive or defeated.

They argue.

They organize.

They speak.

They occupy the street.

And Golestan records them doing it.

Photography cannot stop history from repeating itself.

But it can prevent history from disappearing.

Hengameh Golestan’s photographs remained unseen by much of the world for decades. Today they have become some of the most important visual records of Iranian women resisting the loss of their rights immediately after the revolution.

More than forty years later, another generation of Iranian women stepped into the streets.

Because Golestan was there with her camera in 1979, we can now look from one generation to the other.

And see just how much history remembers.

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