Photos of the abandoned village of Koker in Rudbar County, Gilan Province, will go on view Friday at a solo exhibition in Tehran.
Lifestyle and landscape photographer Alireza Elahi is to present his works at Arte Gallery located at No. 3, 2nd 12-meter Street, Golestan Avenue, Ali-Khani Blvd., south of Hemmat Bridge, according to the Persian photography website of Chiilik.
Koker gained global fame for a trilogy that auteur Abbas Kiarostami (1940-2016) made there between 1987 and 1994. The three films are “Where Is the Friend’s Home?”, “And Life Goes On” (aka Life and Nothing More) and “Through the Olive Trees”.
In 1987, Kiarostami made Where Is the Friend’s Home? In the film, a young boy travels from Koker to a neighboring village to return a notebook to a schoolmate.
Three years later in 1990, a devastating earthquake struck Manjil and Rudbar counties in the northern province. The shock had a moment magnitude of 7.4.
Official reports then said close to 50,000 people lost their lives and 100,000 were injured. Material losses were put at $8 billion.
The quake devastated most of Koker. To rebuild their homes, villagers chose a spot closer to the main road and abandoned Koker for good. The isolation and desolation of Koker by the killer quake attracted Elahi. His photos show how buildings and human traces have disappeared leaving in their wake wilderness and barren land.
After the quake, Kiarostami, who was in Paris at the time, returned home to find the cast for his film Where Is the Friend’s Home? His search resulted in the semi-fictional film Life and Nothing More shot in a documentary style and completed in 1992. The film shows a film director (played by Farhad Kheradmand) and his son on a journey through the quake-stricken areas.
Revolving around Life and Nothing More, the third of Koker Trilogy was made in 1994. Blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction, Through the Olive Trees is the story of two youngsters who survived the quake.
“Now even locals are forgetting what Koker used to look like. In the village time seems to have stopped. The shadow of that ghastly moment (earthquake) is cast over everything. Humans have withdrawn. Nature is in charge again,” Elahi wrote in a note on the exhibit which will run through July 1.
