Mourning as Defiance

The relaunch of this archive unfolds amid yet another brutal chapter in the years following the 1979 Revolution. June 2026 marks the anniversary of the “12 Days of War” initiated by the US and Israel against Iran; a military assault that deepened the already insufferable conditions of everyday life across the country.

A few months later, amid spiraling inflation, the collapse of the currency, rising unemployment, and the relentless machinery of political and social repression, people once again poured into the streets in January 2026. The uprising began in the bazaar, Tehran’s historic economic heart, before spreading across other social sectors and throughout the country. On January 8 and 9, 2026, the Islamic Republic responded with brutal force, leaving thousands consumed by grief, rage, and mourning. The crackdown came to mark an unprecedented massacre in modern Iranian history, remembered as دی ماه خونین (The Bloody Dey) or زمستان سرخ (The Red Winter).

Out of this collective sorrow emerged rituals of remembrance: dances performed at funerals, chants echoing through crowded cemeteries and city squares, songs carried from one mourning body to another. In these gestures, grief became political. Mourning became defiance.

The images gathered here trace those moments: heart-wrenching scenes in which lament transforms into resistance, and collective memory refuses erasure.