I was thinking of Tehran; this lovely unbeautiful city. In the imaginary map of my mind, I was thinking of the locations from Tehran that I have pinned pieces of my happy years of youth on each of them.
I recalled “Haft Samar” gallery, which is undoubtedly one of those places for me.
Twenty-five years ago, in autumn, when Ms. Lili Samari (who was herself a tutor in Art University) and her poet brother, Farhad Samari, opened the “Haft Samar” gallery, and gave the empty walls of their paternal basement this opportunity to have thousands of colorful artworks hanged from them since that day, we were second-year students at the university of art.
The first important exhibition there in our eyes, was the four-person exhibition of photography by Yahya Dehghanpour, Bahman Jalali, Mehrdad Najmabadi and Mehran Mohajer, which brought almost all the professional and amateur photographers of that time to this beautiful newly-established gallery and planted the desire of experiencing such show in the heart of each of us new photographers. A bit later, we took our photos to Ms. Samari with Farshid Azarang, without any recommendation (but an unreasonable self-confidence which was more like arrogance) to reserve a date for exhibition. With all her academic connections and friends among art masters and graduates who could be guessed to have all lined up for a schedule, our effort as second year students was like an arrow in the dark.
But Ms. Samari gave us a time. Immediately, without any words or conditions, with lots of smiles and hope and encouragement. It was unbelievable! She opened her calendar and listed our name for a few months later in the beginning of May. A long-term dream that could have seemed impossible to all of us students, became so easy and reproachless and affordable, thanks to the inherent love of Samari Family.
The opening of our first photo exhibition was on a rainy Friday evening.
Breathless of all the one-month efforts to prepare photos and prints and cards and frames and poster, Farshid and I were standing with a trembling heart, waiting for this new and unknown experience in a May’s evening at 4 o’clock. Lili with her never- fading smile and Farhad with all his constant jokes were trying to calm the situation for us. A new experience that went on even easier than what we thought, thanks to all those friends and comrades. Our heart was becoming warmer with every guest who came to the gallery, and Tehran of the 90s was a more beautiful space with every smile and communication.
I am writing of the years that the number of respectable galleries in the city was not even up to seven or eight (Seyhoun, Golestan, Afrand, and a bit later Barg, Aria and Elaheh), and they were also formed and going on by relying on the inner passion and rewardless efforts of their managers.
I am writing of the years that the gallery owners yet had no assistant and their assistant was not calling constantly just two nights before the opening to ask you with the cold tone of an expert about the edition of the works and the difference of the prices for each edition and your artist-proof.
Those golden and pure days, when there were yet no news of any white gloves and such kind of games, according to what William Klein said, and as a friend was arriving, we were giving him the last print we brought from the darkroom as a present (with a thousand hidden loves). There were still no numbers and fractions and decimals written beside or under the pictures, and there was still much time left to have such white-colored sweet and hidden lights that like the “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, it’s not clear where it shines from on the surface of the image so smooth and sexy and milky.
Haft Samar gallery’s light, like most galleries of that time, was of those boutique spotlight halogens that were illuminating the central point more than the margins.
However, for us photographers who didn’t have the precision printers of today in that period and the quality of our prints in the darkrooms were depended on thousands of ifs and buts of chemical and physical products available in the market, those halogen lights were considered priceless and a mean of hiding errors. Cause while installing the photos, we could tilt the arm of the halogens so much that most of the central light would shine the dark printed areas of our image and so the details could be seen a bit more.
Some kind of dodging and burning on the scene.
Haft Samar gallery was a combination of gallery and house, and its Friday evening openings were a mix of opening and party, and your guests were a mix of artists and relatives; an easy time and space in which no one was boasting and you were not feeling uncomfortable (or they were not making you feel uncomfortable) by what you didn’t know (or better say: what you were not aware of).
The whole space was set up to make people feel good, which it did; in the best way.
In those years of mid 90s that there was no other place in the city to hangout for dating, except the Black Cherry café in Roosevelt, the upper half-floor of Soheil confectionary in Keshavarz Boulevard and around the sewing machine tables of Saleh-Ala’s café-theatre in Sorkheh, the galleries were considered an ideal and stress-free shelter for students’ love affairs.
Lots of hearts that came together in these galleries and many friendships that were made in these places!
I wish that couch under the stairs of Haft Samar gallery had recorded all the moments of those years, so that all those sounds, all those warm and sweet dialogues, those looking-arounds, those fantasies, hopes, ambitions could be seen and heard and tasted again.
Those seven solo exhibitions that I had there in Lili and Farhad’s gallery are among the sweetest memories of my photography years, and a few other experiences that I had in places other than Haft Samar, was nothing! I did not belong to those places and nor did those places belong to my photographs.
Haft Samar gallery and Lili and Farhad which have become like home and family to me, are like the pictures I have captured; part of my growth and movement path.
Not only me, but many of us grew up in Haft Samar gallery (home) and got life and flied to the mainstream world of visual art. Some of the exhibition posters (a memorial to the hopes of each of us) are still on the entrance wall of the gallery.
It wouldn’t be bad if someone from our curator friends who has more time and energy could arrange a memorable exhibition of all their artists of these years (those who are gone or left), on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of this lovely gallery and in honor of all these years of unconditional support of Lili and Farhad Samari, and show a work from each of them, and have no fear if the works of all these artists cover all the doors and walls and corridors of the gallery from ceiling to floor, and let the commuting of all these artists’ guests bring an unprecedented crowdness to Kooh-e Noor and its fifth alley after years.
