Ricard Altés Molina

Picks on own's attitude in front of self image.

Located in mythical ancient Colchis, Tskaltubo in 1931 through a decree by the government of Georgian Soviet Republic became one of the main spa resorts and balneology center in whole Soviet Union. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the resorts stopped working and those huge empty spaces where occupied by waves of refugees expeled from neighbouring Abkhazia, after one year war. Nowadays, there is still a diminished colony of refugees, and the buildings still remain neglected.

Tenth day, that's the meaning of Ashura, mourning day for Shia Muslims. Beyond all stereotypes that Western media have launched against Iran, beyond any consideration, Ashura goes further than just a simple religious celebration. It joins together all Shia community and move them to commemorate not only Emam Hossein memory, but the memory of all the people around them. That's why nazri (kind of charity food) is someway the most social side of this commemoration. These retails of Ashura, taken from Tehran, Qashan, Hormoz and other places around Iran, try to show the different faces of Ashura.

Common daylife excerpts about a misunderstood country and people which keep on their normal life beyond our comprehension about what Iran is. From traditional mentality to westernized clichés.

The Endless Persistence of the Greatest Show on Earth   The lights switched off for them. They keep in contact with their little world, the Circus, but their role has been reduced to pure anecdote. Most of them don’t know what a pension is. While they performed,  they seldom signed any contract, and now at their old age they basically live thanks to their family support. Lluís, despite his personal situation, is a peculiar example, his family is still placing the circus tent wherever they can, following a nomadic way of life. About Carmen, she lives a really different situation, she left trapeze 54 years ago when she went blind when she was 37 years old, and she lives alone in Sitges, a little city close to Barcelona. This a tribute to them.

Hadji Abbas Rahimzadeh is loyal to the tradition that received from his father. More than seventy years ago ─and he is eighty years old─ every Moharram month, in Tasua and Ashura, he gets ready to go out to the streets of Qashan (Iran) to remind Abbas ibn Ali, a really important personality in shia tradition. Half-brother of Hussein, Abbas is one of the martyrs in the famous Kerbala battle, one of the reasons for the break up between shia and sunni in Islam. Tradition says that while Hussein and his 72 followers were surrounded close to nowadays Kerbala, without food or water, Abbas couldn’t bear the suffering of Sakina, his niece and daughter of Hussein. So, he decided to approach to Euphrates river to collect water. After filling a waterskin with water, he was catch unawares by the soldiers of his enemy Yazid and was martyred. In Iran, Abbas is considered protector of fountains, someway as a water saint, and to remind him, in the Ashura processions, an army of water carriers walk around the streets and the brotherhoods (heyat in Persian language) to soothe thirst of the believers that walk on procession with water mixed with rose water.  

I’ve always thought that Tehran is a disregarded city. I know few people, almost nobody, who likes it. I’ve always believed that one of the reasons is because they have spent few hours in this city and they haven’t had the time or the peace to discover it. It is true, Tehran is a crazy urban chaos, is a highly polluted city, to cross a street is risky (well, only at the beginning, after some time you know when you can or not) and his size suposesa waste of time to do any activity or movement in it. Nevertheless, Tehran has something special and is plenty of undiscovered and disregarded places. The Mellat Park Cineplex o Pardis Complex is a building dedicated to leisure and expositions. It is located in the norh area of Tehran, close to the famous Vali Asr avenue and inside the Park Mellat. This is the technical information about this building (http://www.archdaily.com/115928/). This photogallery is only an example that, dispite the urban horror of this city, there are charming places.

I always wanted to wear a cap, I made the most of my trips abroad to wear one, as at home it was considered as oddness, something snobbery, and for this stupid complex I never wore a cap, but I always liked it. Besides, I didn’t like too much the caps I used to see, so it was not an issue to be worried about. In one of my trips to Georgia, one of those countries where lot of people wear cap, I realised that there were lot of little workshops of handmade caps. I met an old man who has a workshop close to Vagzlis Moedani, which is really tiny, and he shares that little place with a shoemaker. Here is his workshop.

I don’t know if it will be still there when I will go back. It was a stunning discovery, a place that some of my friends in Tbilisi had no idea about it and I took them there to show them that it exists. This velodrome was built in 1882 in nowadays the heart of the city, in Mardjanishvili area, and it lost its magnificence during the fall of the Soviet bloc and the independence of Georgia. Tamaz Kiknadze, coach of the cycling team in the velodrome, from the time when he was fourteen years old till today, he has lived devoted to it, and in that place he, besides, has a cycle repair workshop. In July 2012, when I met him, he was ready to leave. A Dutch company had purchased that site, as an effect of the speculative fever in Tbilisi. Probably, when I will back, the velodrome no longer exists.  

I stayed in Pankisi Valley in december 2011 for few weeks, and in April 2012 I came back just for two days in order to document zikr. This prayer and ritual involves the recitation of the names of God. Usually, in sufi brotherhoods or turuk (plural form for tarika) take part only men, but in Duisi (Pankisi) we can find an interesting case (though not exclusive) about a sisterhood.