Iran Through the Lens: Isfahan, Yazd and Everyday Life from the 1900s to 1970s

Iran Through the Lens: Isfahan, Yazd and Everyday Life from the 1900s to 1970s

Before the revolution of 1979 redrew the boundaries of public life, before geopolitics reduced a civilization to headlines, there was simply Iran — a country of staggering beauty, deep contradictions, and daily life that photographs captured with an intimacy no political narrative can convey. From the twilight of the Qajar dynasty through the rapid modernization of the Pahlavi era, cameras documented a society in constant motion: ancient bazaars humming alongside new boulevards, Zoroastrian fire temples standing within sight of Shia mosques, nomadic tribes crossing mountain passes as jet aircraft traced lines overhead.

The cities of Isfahan and Yazd occupy a special place in this visual history. Isfahan, the jewel of Safavid architecture, was already legendary when European travelers first described it in the seventeenth century. Yazd, rising from the desert with its forest of windcatchers and its ancient Zoroastrian communities, represented something older still — a living connection to pre-Islamic Persia that survived not through isolation but through quiet persistence. Together, these cities offer a lens into the full complexity of Persian culture as it navigated the upheavals of the twentieth century.

Naqsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan, one of the largest and most beautiful public squares in the world, surrounded by masterpieces of Safavid architecture.

The Qajar Era: Iran at the Turn of the Century

The earliest photographs of Iran date to the 1840s, but it was during the late Qajar period — roughly 1880 to 1925 — that photography became widespread enough to document everyday Iranian life. The Qajar court was itself fascinated by the new technology. Naser al-Din Shah, who reigned from 1848 to 1896, was an avid photographer who maintained a personal studio and produced thousands of images.

But it is the photographs taken outside the court — in bazaars, caravanserais, village squares, and private homes — that reveal the texture of life in turn-of-the-century Iran. Images from this period show a society that was simultaneously cosmopolitan and deeply traditional. In Tehran, European-style suits appeared alongside flowing robes. In provincial cities like Isfahan and Yazd, daily rhythms continued much as they had for centuries, governed by the calls to prayer, the opening and closing of bazaar gates, and the seasonal migrations of nomadic tribes through the surrounding countryside.

Naser al-Din Shah Qajar (1831-1896), the Persian king who was himself an avid photographer, helping to establish the art of photography across Iran during the late Qajar period.

Women in Qajar-Era Photography

Among the most striking images from this period are photographs of women — both studio portraits and candid scenes. Qajar-era women's fashion was distinctive: short, wide skirts over trousers, elaborate headpieces, and bold use of cosmetics including thick eyebrows that connected across the bridge of the nose, a beauty ideal of the period. These images challenge simplistic narratives about Iranian women's history, revealing a world of social activity, artistic expression, and personal style that predated twentieth-century debates about modernization and tradition.

Isfahan: Half the World

"Isfahan is half the world," runs the Persian proverb — Isfahan nesf-e jahan — and photographs from the early to mid-twentieth century show why this was no exaggeration. The city that Shah Abbas I transformed into his imperial capital in the early 1600s remained, three centuries later, one of the most visually spectacular urban landscapes on Earth.

The Si-o-se-pol (Bridge of 33 Arches) in Isfahan, stretching nearly 300 meters across the Zayandeh River. For centuries it has served as a social gathering place for Isfahanis.

The Bridges of Isfahan

The bridges of Isfahan are among the most photographed structures in all of Iran, and for good reason. The Si-o-se-pol (Bridge of 33 Arches), stretching nearly 300 meters across the Zayandeh River, served not merely as a crossing but as a social space — a promenade, a gathering place, a spot for tea and conversation. Photographs from the 1920s through the 1960s show the bridge alive with activity at all hours: families strolling at sunset, vendors selling fruit and sweets, students sitting in the lower arches studying or debating.

The Khaju Bridge, built in the 1650s, doubled as a dam and a royal retreat, with a pavilion at its center where Shah Abbas II once held court. Twentieth-century photographs capture it in various moods — misty winter mornings with the arches reflected in still water, crowded summer evenings with Isfahanis escaping the heat, the rare flood years when water rushed through every arch with a force that made the stones tremble.

Mosques, Minarets, and the Naqsh-e Jahan Square

The Naqsh-e Jahan Square (Imam Square), one of the largest public squares in the world, was the beating heart of Isfahan and a favorite subject of photographers throughout the twentieth century. Surrounded by the Shah Mosque, the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, the Ali Qapu Palace, and the entrance to the Grand Bazaar, the square was a microcosm of Iranian life — religious, commercial, political, and recreational all at once.

Photographs from the 1930s and 1940s show polo matches being played in the square, continuing a tradition that Shah Abbas himself had established. Later images capture the square's transformation into a more sedate public garden, though the surrounding architecture continued to draw visitors and photographers from around the world. The tilework of the Shah Mosque — intricate geometric and floral patterns in luminous blue, turquoise, and gold — was a particular obsession for photographers attempting to capture the interplay of light, color, and mathematical precision.

Yazd: Desert City of Windcatchers and Fire Temples

If Isfahan represented the grandeur of Safavid imperial ambition, Yazd embodied something more understated but equally remarkable — the ingenuity of a civilization that had learned to thrive in one of the most inhospitable environments on Earth. Located on the edge of the Dasht-e Kavir, Iran's great central desert, Yazd developed architectural solutions to extreme heat that remain relevant to sustainable design today.

The iconic windcatchers (badgirs) of Yazd rise above the city's mud-brick rooftops, an ingenious passive cooling system that has kept homes comfortable for centuries in Iran's desert heat.

The Windcatchers of Yazd

The windcatchers (badgirs) of Yazd are perhaps the most iconic feature of the city's skyline. These tall, rectangular towers, open at the top to catch prevailing breezes and funnel them down into the rooms below, functioned as passive air conditioning systems centuries before electricity made mechanical cooling possible. Photographs of Yazd's roofscape show a forest of these structures — some plain and functional, others elaborately decorated — rising above the mud-brick buildings like a fleet of architectural sails.

The technology was sophisticated. Multi-directional windcatchers could catch breezes from any quarter. Some were connected to underground water channels (qanats), so that air passed over cool water before entering living spaces, creating a natural evaporative cooling effect. In a city where summer temperatures regularly exceeded 40 degrees Celsius, these structures were not luxuries but necessities.

Zoroastrian Communities in Yazd

Yazd has been home to one of Iran's largest Zoroastrian communities for centuries. Zoroastrianism, the pre-Islamic religion of Persia founded by the prophet Zarathustra, once dominated the entire Iranian plateau. After the Arab conquest in the seventh century, the Zoroastrian population gradually diminished, but communities in Yazd and Kerman persisted, maintaining their fire temples, their ritual practices, and their distinct cultural identity.

Photographs from the early twentieth century document Zoroastrian life in Yazd with remarkable detail. The Atash Behram (Fire of Victory), the highest grade of Zoroastrian fire temple, housed a flame that had reportedly been burning continuously for more than 1,500 years. Images show worshippers in white clothing — the Zoroastrian color of purity — tending the sacred fire, celebrating the Nowruz (New Year) festival, and gathering for community events that blended religious observance with social celebration.

The Towers of Silence (dakhma), circular raised structures where Zoroastrians traditionally exposed their dead to be consumed by vultures rather than contaminating earth or fire with corpses, were still in active use in Yazd well into the 1960s. Photographs of these haunting structures on the outskirts of the city document a funerary practice stretching back thousands of years, finally abandoned not through religious prohibition but through the practical reality of urbanization encroaching on the towers' locations.

The Zoroastrian Fire Temple (Atash Behram) in Yazd, home to a sacred flame that has reportedly burned continuously for more than 1,500 years, tended by the city's ancient Zoroastrian community.

The Bazaars: Arteries of Persian Life

No photographic record of Iran would be complete without the bazaars. More than mere marketplaces, the bazaars of Isfahan, Yazd, Tehran, and Tabriz were complete urban ecosystems — containing mosques, bathhouses, caravanserais, schools, and warehouses alongside thousands of individual shops and workshops. The bazaar was where commerce, religion, politics, and social life intersected, and its merchants (bazaaris) constituted one of the most influential classes in Iranian society.

Craftsmanship and Trade

Photographs from the early to mid-twentieth century capture the bazaars in their full vitality. Coppersmiths hammering enormous trays and samovars. Carpet weavers working at looms in dim workshops, their fingers moving with a speed that seemed impossible. Spice merchants presiding over pyramids of saffron, turmeric, and dried limes. Calligraphers producing Qurans and poetry manuscripts with reed pens. Each trade occupied its own section of the bazaar, a spatial organization that had remained consistent for centuries.

The Isfahan bazaar, stretching for several kilometers, was particularly renowned for its minakari (enamelwork), ghalamzani (metalwork engraving), and textile production. The Yazd bazaar was famous for its silk weaving, a tradition dating back to the Sassanid period, and for termeh, the exquisite handwoven fabric that required months of painstaking labor to produce a single piece.

Pre-Revolution Iran: The 1960s and 1970s

The final decades before the 1979 revolution produced some of the most evocative photographs of Iranian life. The Iran of the 1970s was a society of vivid contrasts — miniskirts and chadors sharing the same sidewalk, gleaming new universities rising beside centuries-old madrasas, European sports cars navigating streets built for donkey caravans.

Urban Modernity

Tehran in the 1960s and 1970s was a city undergoing transformation at dizzying speed. Oil wealth funded new infrastructure — highways, hospitals, universities, cultural centers. Photographs from this period show a capital that looked increasingly like a Southern European city: outdoor cafes, cinemas showing both Iranian and international films, bookshops stocked with literature in Persian, French, English, and Arabic. Women participated visibly in public life as students, professionals, and artists.

Yet the modernization was uneven. Photographs taken in the same period but in different neighborhoods reveal the gap between the affluent north of Tehran and the working-class south. And in provincial cities like Isfahan and Yazd, traditional patterns of life persisted alongside selective adoption of modern conveniences. A family might own a television and a refrigerator while still living in a courtyard house organized around principles unchanged since the medieval period.

Everyday Life and Human Connection

The most compelling photographs of pre-revolution Iran are often the most ordinary: a family sharing a picnic beside the Zayandeh River, a group of old men playing backgammon in a tea house, a young woman walking through the Isfahan bazaar with textbooks under her arm, children flying kites from a rooftop in Yazd. These images capture not a political argument but a human reality — the daily texture of life in a civilization that was simultaneously ancient and modern, traditional and cosmopolitan.

It is this everyday Iran — the Iran of tea and poetry, of hospitality and craftsmanship, of families and neighborhoods — that photography preserves most faithfully. Long after the political debates have exhausted themselves, these images endure as testimony to the richness and complexity of Persian culture as lived by ordinary people.

"Iran is a country of poets, not politicians. Every taxi driver has memorized Hafez. Every grandmother can recite Rumi. The photographs remember what the headlines forget."

Inside the Grand Bazaar of Isfahan, where vaulted ceilings stretch for kilometers over workshops and stalls. The bazaar has been the beating heart of Isfahan's commercial and social life for centuries.

Preserving Iran's Visual Heritage

The photographs that survive from twentieth-century Iran are more than historical curiosities. They are a bridge between generations — connecting Iranians in the diaspora to the homeland their parents or grandparents left, and offering the wider world a view of Iran that transcends the narrow frames of news coverage. Every image of a crowded bazaar, a quiet courtyard, a family gathering, or a sunset over Isfahan's bridges is an act of preservation.

To explore designs inspired by the beauty and heritage of Iran — from Isfahan's tilework to the landscapes of Yazd — visit the Iran collection at Native Threads. Each piece is crafted to honor the depth of Persian civilization and to share its stories with the world.

About Native Threads

Native Threads celebrates the history, art, and cultural heritage of the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia through thoughtfully designed products. Our Iran collection draws on centuries of Persian aesthetic tradition — from architectural motifs and calligraphic art to the landscapes and cityscapes that have inspired poets and travelers for generations. We believe that sharing these stories through design helps build understanding and appreciation across cultures.