A memoir in photographs · Tehran, 1978–1979
Rumors of Revolution
An Eyewitness Photographer in Tehran, 1979, and the Lies That Still Shape Iran
Iran did not choose this revolution; it was chosen for Iran.
The book
How did this regime begin, and was it ever what Iranians wanted?
In February 2026, the man who had ruled Iran since 1989 was killed in American and Israeli strikes, and an old question came back.
In the autumn of 1978, Farrokh Ashti Ashtiani went home to Tehran with his cameras and a press badge left over from his student newspaper in Texas, a decoy that no news organization stood behind. Through the months that followed he photographed a country coming apart: the marches and burning streets, the crowds celebrating the Shah’s departure, Khomeini’s return, and the three nights in February 1979 when the old order fell.
Rumors of Revolution sets nearly one hundred black-and-white photographs, most of them his own, beside a first-person account of what he saw, and of what he came to believe: that this was a revolution imposed on Iran rather than chosen by it.
The book also includes a chart of Iran’s dynasties from the Medes to 1979, a timeline from 1941 to today, a glossary of Persian terms, and questions for reading groups.
Photographs
From the contact sheets
Eight frames from the book, shown as they were filed, with the date in both the Western and the Iranian calendar where it is known. The book holds nearly one hundred. Select any frame to see it larger.
From the first chapter
I was eighteen, in 1965, when my father told me the king had cancer. He said it over dinner, the way you would mention that an old friend was unwell. His classmate from school had been the Shah’s personal physician for almost twenty-five years, and he had told my father, one old friend to another. Nobody in my family whispered it to anyone; it was simply true, and it was ours. Thirteen years later, I watched a country tear itself apart over rumors, a face in the moon, a cleric who spoke seven languages, a massacre of thousands that turned out to be dozens, while the one true secret I had carried since I was a boy stayed hidden in plain sight.
Rumors of Revolution · “Heading Into the Storm”
Also by the author · in Persian
Farar Maghzha
فرار مغزها
“Brain Drain”: satirical articles in Persian, written over more than twenty-five years.
| Paperback, 212 pages | 979-8-9963726-0-7 | $17.99 |
| E-book | Kindle, Apple, Kobo and others | $7.99 |
About the author
Farrokh Ashti Ashtiani
Farrokh Ashti Ashtiani was born in Iran in 1947. He has been taking pictures since the sixth grade, when a Kodak box camera made him the family’s official photographer, lining up relatives against the wall.
He came to the United States in 1970 and graduated in 1976 from the University of Texas at Arlington, where he photographed for the student newspaper, The Shorthorn. His pictures of President Gerald Ford’s 1976 visit to Texas won third prize in the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association competition, and his work also appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Arlington Daily News. He later earned a second degree from George Mason University.
Returning to Tehran in the autumn of 1978, he photographed the Iranian Revolution as an independent photographer, representing no news organization. His photographs appeared in Kayhan and the English-language Tehran Journal and on the cover of the Dallas Times Herald’s Sunday magazine. His photographs and negatives of the revolution are preserved in the UCSB Library’s Special Research Collections.
Photography was never his living. He spent his career in finance, as chief financial officer and a partner in two California start-ups, and retired in 2004. He lives in Santa Barbara, California, where he tends his garden and a couple of beehives.
Press & libraries
For journalists, librarians and booksellers
Press kit
- Front cover, high resolutionJPG
- Author photographJPG
- Short and long biographyPDF
- Selected photographs for review useOn request
Interview requests, review copies and permission to reproduce photographs: see Contact below.
Ordering
- Publisher
- Wide Angle Press, Santa Barbara, California
- Published
- February 1, 2027
- Distributor
- Ingram (bookstores and libraries), Amazon
- LCCN
- 2026928043
- Subjects
- Iran, history, revolution of 1979; personal memoirs; photojournalism
- Archive
- Ashtiani Family Papers (Mss 396), UCSB Library
Contact
Write to the author
For interviews, talks, review copies, library and bookstore questions, or permission to use a photograph.
farrokh@farrokhashtiani.com