Art Opening Reception, 5:00 - 6:00 pm
Art Exhibit Runs May 14-July 10, 2008

About the Exhibit

The exhibition comes at a politically charged moment when dehumanization can all too easily take the place of communication and understanding.

The show is unique in that - aside from being an unprecedented insiders' look at one of the more closed societies in the Middle East - it is also on show at the Woodrow Wilson Center, thus more likely to be viewed by policymakers and opinion-formers than a traditional galley-going crowd.

I've put the show up exclusively with my own money and no sponsorship, in order to avoid allegations of political bias in what is a very polarised issue. I also look to this generation's humanity, rather than making any political statements.

This show is as much ethnographic as journalistic as artistic.

Children of the Revolution

With 70 percent of its people under 30 years old, Iran is one of the youngest societies on earth. At the same time, Tehran is at the receiving end of a media campaign that has created an international impression of the country and its people that is far removed from reality.

For three years I lived and traveled in Iran, and achieved extraordinary access in the social undergrounds that define this up-and-coming generation of Iranians. During this time, I realized they are proving one of the most electrifying facilitators of change in the country's recent history.

But the third generation's deeds are woefully under-reported by Western journalists who lack the time and space in their media coupled with a lack of access from the side of the Iranian government to properly chronicle this generation's development.

From experimenting with new art and music forms to pushing for government reform, often against extraordinary and repressive odds, they are fully participating in the maturing of an Islamic Republic brought about by their parents.

This exhibition at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC aims to take the focus off Iran's politicians and realign it squarely on its people. It will celebrate the existence of Iran's third generation of the Revolution and explore its significance.

International policymakers seeking to understand Iran's rising influence can ill afford to ignore a youth factor that already forms a vast demographic majority in today's Iran.

It is a generation whose parents redrew the political landscape of the region when they deposed the Shah in 1979 and established an Islamic theocracy in his place. This generation's upbringing was defined by the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, economic embargo, and the ongoing confrontation with America.

About Iason Athanasiadis

Writer, photographer and television producer, Iason Athanasiadis has been covering the Middle East, Central Asia and the southeast Mediterranean since 1999. He earned degrees in Arabic and Modern Middle Eastern Studies at Oxford University (BA) as well as Persian and Contemporary Iranian Studies at Tehran's School of International Studies (MA).

Athanasiadis lived in Iran from 2004-2007, covering conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Lebanon for U.S., British and international media including the Times, the Christian Science Monitor, American Prospect, British Journalism Review and the South China Morning Post. He covered the 2003 invasion of Iraq from Qatar for al-Jazeera, the 2004 Athens Olympics for BBC World and the 2006 Israeli-Hizbullah war in Lebanon as a freelancer. At the same time, his photography has been featured in solo exhibitions in Germany, Greece and Iran, and his work published in Der Spiegel and the Los Angeles Times, among other newspapers and magazines.

A native of Greece, Athanasiadis is currently a Fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. He is an Aristotle Onassis Foundation scholar.