I spoke with my mother, Tahereh Fallahzadeh, about the work of Manoucher Yektai for the occasion of this publication on his work. We decided to hold our conversation in our photography darkrooms; I went to my darkroom in Brooklyn and spoke with Tahereh in her darkroom in Tehran. In the dark we talked about Yektai’s paintings and poetry, how they have influenced our own work, and how his foresight and decisions changed our ideas about art. Over the course of three weeks, we met several times in our respective darkrooms, imagining and remembering Manoucher’s work. Our conversation was in Farsi, and has been transcribed and translated here.

Hadi Fallahpisheh: I thought it would be good to go back and start from the first time we talked about Manoucher Yektai, which, for me, is the first memory I have of Manoucher, when I found his book in our library so many years ago. Maybe you can tell me again how you ended up with that book, because I know it wasn’t readily available in bookstores or at all easy to find.

Tahereh Fallahzadeh: Well, you know, we have a large collection of poetry books, and the book you are talking about I have had forever, the one called Falgoosh. It was a very important book for me. It’s a very special book and unlike other poetry from that time. And yes, you’re right, it wasn’t an easy book to find; I remember I bought it on Enghelab Street from a bookstore that was famous for having special, rare books. It’s a fascinating book; if I’m right, it’s one of the earliest poems from the modernist school of poetry in Iran.

HF: Yes, I remember reading that it took him ten years to finish it. The way the text is, is also so unique; it doesn’t have any style—in some ways, it’s a narrative filled with inner conversations that take the form of a poem, which, at that time, was so radical. I think it wasn’t even considered a poem, because it didn’t look like any other poetry book published at the time.

TF: Yes, the book is all one long poem, that gets rid of the idea of rhyme and meter, and really works with the length of each line being determined by the idea and thought that is being expressed. Yet it’s still a narrative, and it keeps a bridge of connection with very historical and traditional Persian poetry, and, in so many subtle ways, also manages to criticize the structure of Iranian society at the time. And in this specific work, Falgoosh, it’s so powerful because of the legend and tradition it’s pointing to.

HF: Yes, that’s why I thought we should have this conversation in the dark. I remember the first time I read the book, I really wasn’t understanding it but I remember talking to you, and how much time you took to explain the title of the work, Falgoosh, which describes the whole book and what the poem is about. Can you tell me again?

TF: Well, Falgoosh, literally, means “listening in the dark for one’s fortune,” and it’s a very old and almost forgotten Persian tradition where, on a specific night, people wanting to know their future would go and stand in a dark corner at a busy intersection in order to listen and catch words from the conversations of passersby, which they would then try to interpret as hints for what awaited them in the future.

HF: I love that so much, and that’s why I thought it would be interesting if we talked about Manoucher’s work from our darkrooms. It’s a very beautiful idea, that on a dark night, in an unlit corner, people would go and search for their fortunes among the drifting words of others just passing by in the night—that it depends so much on chance, what life has in store for you. And that also reminds me so much of how a photographer works in the darkroom, and how much photography is based on chance. To be honest, I don’t think it would be untruthful to say that these two things, subconsciously, have formed what I do in my art—also, the idea of trusting that you can find your answers in the darkness.

TF: According to this tradition, the idea is that a person goes on this particular night with an intention in their heart, and they interpret whatever they hear as something related to that intention. It makes me think of the negatives I use in the darkroom, as if the negative is my intention and what happens in the darkness is an answer to it. Also, this idea of having an intention and allowing life to bring answers for it reminds me of Manoucher’s paintings; there’s always a subject but it’s always defined by the other things that determine it—the brushstroke, the palette knife, a spatula or piece of wood, and the whole process as the painting comes into being.

HF: That’s a very beautiful metaphor. I think you must remember, even before I went to college, how, one day, after I had seen a group show, I came back home asking if the painter who made the work was the same Manoucher who had written that book. It was this large white painting of fruit and bowls and plates with a background that was something like an open window to a landscape or maybe a painting, and I guess there was also a bouquet of flowers there.

TF: Yes, I remember—I knew the style of Manoucher’s painting, especially those still life works with the window landscapes and flowers. In fact, I’m fairly sure I had told you about those works, but I think that must have been the first time you saw them in person.

HF: Yes, that was the first time, and it affected me so much. You can imagine how, based on what one would usually see in the galleries in Tehran, seeing a painting like that—how surprising it was. It had the feeling of a scene I had always seen in my life because it was almost like a Haft-sin that we make for the New Year, but, at the same time, it looked nothing like any painting I had seen before from an Iranian painter. It was so abstract and expressive, had so much action and gesture in it, that, to be honest, I was confused. It was like smelling perfume for the first time and loving it but also feeling confused, not knowing why it smells so good.

TF: It’s as if Manoucher’s paintings and poems are from two different worlds. His paintings have a very strong sense of universality in technique and imagery, while his poems are filled with local signifiers and references. And to me it’s one of the qualities of his work to have two different worlds in balance. He wrote most of his poems abroad, with a nostalgic view to his past in Iran, and he was writing in Farsi, with so much remembrance, but, at the same time, the paintings he is known for are so far from any sense of nostalgia or even any references to Iran.

HF: The way I see it is that when he was in Iran he was already a modernist poet, and when he left he held that close to his heart and kept writing in Farsi from the same source; but, with his paintings, he established another kind of modernism that was shaped by European and American artists. And, as you say, I think his paintings achieved a kind of universality and communicated with a broader audience.

TF: Also, sitting here in the darkness and talking about Falgoosh and Manoucher’s paintings, it’s interesting that most of the poem happens in darkness, in the dark nights, while his paintings are mostly white, and have so much imagery of light.

HF: It’s also interesting sitting here in the dark and thinking about the light reflecting back on us as viewers, and about how maybe these paintings full of light are the answers he found when he was searching in the dark. It’s just so easy to remember those paintings—it only takes a moment to envision the table and fruit, the window, the landscape, the green trees. Do you have anything of the poems in your memory?

TF: There’s one that I remember, it goes something like: “In the room of my memories, how many times you have loved someone, when was the last time you gave a wild flower on your path to your hand, are you walking with a lantern, or by the moonlight, I have to open my wings, it’s time to get up, I have to finish things, I should bring the light.”

HF: That’s beautiful; it’s so free. He’s not the most famous Iranian poet, but it’s very special to think of his words in relation to his paintings. Here, they say that what makes his paintings so memorable and special is that he always kept a sense of poetry going on under the layers of thick paint, although the brushstrokes are very rough. I think something like this is in your photographs too: under the surface of your rough black-and-white photographs there’s a poetic spirit running through.

TF: Well, a lot of Iranian artists were and are so influenced by his work and what he achieved. He opened a lot of doors, and he himself had an open mind about being contemporary, with, at the same time, such a deep admiration for the history of painting. I also really appreciated that, in his paintings, there’s always a subject, but it’s been nearly obliterated, and pushed to the limit of representation. In a lot of my photographs from the nineties, and even today, I have always tried to keep some sort of image recognizable, despite how hard it might be for the viewer to recognize it.

HF: I’m not sure I ever told you this story, because I was so disappointed, but when I first arrived in New York I asked a lot of people if they knew where Manoucher Yektai lived. I was told that he didn’t want to be disturbed, and that, in recent years, he had really cut himself off from others. But I really wanted to meet him and talk with him. So eventually I found his address and I went to his apartment on the Upper West Side, but with little chance of meeting him, because he was already spending most of his time out of the city. I still wish I could have met him and told him how important his work and his poetry are to me.

TF: Oh, you never told me that. I wish you could have met him, but so much of him lives in his work.

HF: Yes, it’s something like a shared experience, that I have and you also have with what he was thinking. I think it’s a shared experience in our love of images, even though the final work is never about that image. Maybe it’s also a semi-belief that we don’t want to go fully abstract: there’s always something represented, but the final work is beyond that very thing; it’s something within this framework that keeps our approach poetic. I would also like to think that, although our works come from a place and are not ahistorical, they manage to be about now, and the present moment, which I think is one aspect of what makes Manoucher’s paintings and poems so extraordinary.