Considered one of the world’s best working photojournalists, David Burnett published a new photography book this week, “44 Days: Iran and the Remaking of the World.” In words and images, Burnett gives us a behind-the-scenes, extraordinary eyewitness account of what he saw, photographed, and experienced during the chaos, brutality and political upheaval of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Arrested at one point by the Shah’s police for taking photographs, Burnett’s images of street demonstrations, oppression and bloodshed in Iran culminating in the violent overthrow of the Shah — though taken 30 years ago — presage images broadcast worldwide last summer following Iran’s controversial election and its regime’s strong-armed suppression of dissenting protesters. In a telephone interview with New York Times senior photographer, James Estrin, himself a Pulitzer prize winner, who reviewed Burnett’s book in the NYT photography blog, Lens, Burnett observed, “When you look at my photographs, and some of the cellphone pictures this summer, it’s almost spooky because you see the same kinds of moments, except with different cars and different clothes. The irony is that the people in my pictures became the new regime that is now trying to quell the street demonstrations 30 years later.” Estrin reports in his blog that Burnett has tried for years to return to Iran, but Iran has repeatedly denied his requests for a visa. Nineteen stunning images from Burnett’s 233-page book can be viewed on the Lens blog here. CNN commentator and chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, who was born in Iran, wrote the foreward.
