Italian Photographer Showing Dasht-e Lut in Black & White

A series of black and white photographs of Lut Desert in Iran by Italian photographer John Randolph Pepper are on show at Aaran Art Gallery in Tehran until September 25.

The exhibition “Inhabited Deserts” features photos of Lut, widely referred to as Dasht-e Lut, which is a large salt desert in Kerman Province and Sistan and Baluchestan Province. It is the world’s 27th largest desert and is inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List, Tiwall reported.

Pepper, 60, works only in black and white. He has visited deserts on Iran thrice and will show the photos in his upcoming book that also includes photos of deserts in Egypt, Mauritania, Oman, the UAE and Nevada in the US.

Born in Rome, Pepper is also a screenwriter and theater and film director. He has lived and worked in Rome, Paris, New York and Sicily. At the age of 14, he apprenticed with famous photographer Ugo Mulas and had his first photograph published in Newsweek magazine. For 30 years Pepper has balanced his career between theater, film and photography. In Pepper’s work, the recurring theme is the people and the world around them.