Newsha tavakolian biography of donald
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Ceremony to Mourn Qasem Soleimani in Tehran
04 January, 2020
Women mourn the death of Major General Qasem Soleimani, at a commemoration service in Tehran, Iran.
Major General Qasem Soleimani (62) was killed on 3 January at Baghdad airport, along with other Iran-backed militia figures, in an air strike ordered by US president Donald Trump. The US had pursued Soleimani for years, claiming that operations in neighboring Iraq had killed hundreds of American military personnel, and the Pentagon said the air strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans. Much of Soleimani’s career had been spent at the top of Iran’s Quds Force— the foreign operations wing of the elite paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. In recent years, the US had seen him as the mastermind behind Iran’s expanded influence in proxy conflicts stretching from Iraq and Lebanon to Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan. Some regional analysts considered him to be the second most powe
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“I head out to take pictures of the Corona crisis in Tehran. In Iran we are used to crises and we adjust quickly to new realities. I put on latex handskar, place a mask over my mouth and nose, and pack a sterilizer in my camera bag. The new normal. Streets that would normally be bustling with people and cars are deserted. I try to breathe through my mask. It’s suffocating. I feel as if I’ve stepped into some dystopian future.
“I pull the mask down. A sweet whiff of spring hangs in the air. Here this means the Iranian New Year is upon us. For millennia, way before Islam and other religions, Iranians would uppstart their year celebrating the eternal cycle of defeat of light over darkness. On the first day of spring families, friends and loved ones gather to wish for a healthy New Year.
“But this year we are all told to stay home by the authorities. They mismanaged the crisis and are now at best struggling to contain it.”
“Iran is one of the worst h
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Newsha Tavakolian
Newsha Tavakolian (born 1981) is an Iranian photojournalist and documentary photographer. She has worked for TIME Magazine, The New York Times, Le Figaro, and National Geographic. Her work focuses on women's issues and she has been a member of the Rawiya women's photography collective which she co-established in 2011. Tavakolian is a full member of Magnum Photos.
Born and brought up in Tehran, at age 16, Tavakolian took a six-month photography course, after which she began working as a professional photographer in the Iranian press. She started at the women's daily newspaper Zan, and later worked for other nine reformist dailies, all of which have since been banned. She covered the July 1999 student uprising, using her Minoltawith a 50mm lens, and her photographs were published in several publications. However, she was forced to go on hiatus from her photojournalist work following the "chaos" of Iran’s presidential election in 2009. During this time, she began ot