Starting on June 13, 2009, people in Tehran, Iran, poured out in their hundreds of thousands, defying official bans and suffering killings and brutality to protest the elections and the regime that betrayed their votes. The demonstrators adopted green as their unifying color. There were street protests through June, and as late as December 7, 2009.
This movement and its images was recorded, not only through press reports, but through all the social networks, and the use of proxies when those were banned. I was moved to capture that movement on canvas, and Green Tehran is the result. It was a hard painting to bring off because of the detail in the crowd. I show images of three young women protesters superimposed on an image of one of the demonstrations. I was able to find references to two photo-journalists for two of the 4 images I used as a basis for the painting: Oliver Laban-Mattei and Behrouz Mehrimages.
I hope you find this moving. It is my tribute.
