Diplomacy and Murder in Kurdistan: The Life, Death and Photography of Alexander Iyas, Tsar´s Consul to Persia 1901-1914

Iran Heritage Foundation, London Middle East Institute at SOAS and the Harvard Club of the United Kingdom.

Alexander Ivanovich Iyas was a Finno-Russian officer, linguist and photographer who served as Tsar Nicholas II consul in Persia from 1901-1914. Had it not been for an extraordinary set of coincidences, namely his death by beheading at the hands of Turkish and Kurdish irregular troops in December 1914, the recovery of his negatives on a Turkish officer killed at the battle for Tabriz in January 1915 and my profession of earthquake geologist in Iran in the 1970s and 80s, neither Iyas nor his remarkable collection of photographs would have ever been discovered. In fact, I wouldn’t know today that he had been my great-uncle. Today the interest in Iyas is twofold. On the political front, he was an active participant in the last days of the Great Game, the rivalry between the British and Russian empires for the control of central Asia. Serving first on the Afghan frontier, then, after Persia (Iran) had been officially divided into Russian and British zones of influence, in Kurdistan on the Ottoman (to-day Iraq) frontier, Iyas was both a supporter and fierce critic of Russia’s methods of domination. As a photographer he had a keen aesthetic eye, and his non-aristocratic background and fluency in many of the local languages resulted in a photographic reportage style well in advance of his times. His collection comprises many unique images of Kurdish tribes, Persian administrators and Russian diplomats and scenes from the country for which he had a great affection. There are no other known collections of photographs for this time and place.

John Tchalenko is curator of the Brunei Gallery exhibition Images from the Endgame and author of the book of the same title published by Saqi Books. After many years work in Iran he became a documentary film director and is today Reader in Drawing and Cognition at the University of the Arts London.

This lecture is organised in conjunction with the Images from the Endgame: Persia through a Russian Lens 1901-1914 exhibition which is on view at the Brunei Gallery of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London from 10 October to 9 December 2006. John Tchalenko will be giving a guided tour of the exhibition at 4pm on 22 November 2006.