I have lost count at the amount of times I wanted to launch this project. It began at the start of 2015, when after many years I rekindled my love for wrestling. It was during boyhood that the sport caught my attention, it being the pinnacle of honourable masculinity, pitting strength against strength. A sport which requires a magnitude of self-discipline, stoicism and the ability to work on each part of the body, making sure everything is at its best.
When I began watching it as a boy, it was a specific kind of wrestling, which incorporated a lot of theatrics, later I would become immensely tired of it, and in the end see at as ridiculous to say the least. As I entered my early twenties I discovered cage fighting, a strange kind of martial arts on the outset, but one which, although still possessing an element of theatrics to it, was not completely saturated in commercialisation and an emasculating campness that WWE was. In UFC there was something raw, something that stripped away all the pretense and peacocking, in order to give men the freedom to show their strengths and prowess. Here men engage in two things – the primal and the methodical, the primal being of course beating your opponent into submission, all within the confinds of a strict set of rules, and the methodical acting as an integral part to the entire fighting process, to understand how to defeat your opponent.
Wrestlers at a Zoorkhaneh / Tehran 1950’s
Two heroes of mine, the Russian legend Fedor Emelianenko and the Iranian-American newcomer Beneil Dariush are marked out as masters of the sport. They are a manifestation of masculinity in its purest form, towers of physical and mental strength, uncompromising and utterly confident in their abilities.
How this led to a project, I will explain. With my new found passion for wrestling, I remembered traditional Persian wrestling – Varzesh-e Phalavani – it is a sport that stretches back three millennia, germinating in the mists of time, during the height of the Parthian Empire, a sport which has always remained at the centre of Persian culture. Despite the Arab invasions, Varzesh-e Pahlavani remained steadfast, merely incorporating Islamic symbolism into its rituals. Today, the sport is a composite of Ancient Iranian, Kurdish and Arab techniques, with its training regime structured with Shi’a, Sufi and Zoroastrian spiritual elements. For the rituals are a pathway to enhancing a sense of masculine purity.
Photo by Sadegh Tirafkan / Untitled from the series Zoorkhaneh
Training takes place in the Zoorkhaneh, a male only space where men can bond and become accustomed to the techniques without distraction. Poetry and spirituality is a key part of the process, with the Morshed (master) reigning absolute, and reciting extracts from the Shahnameh. This is where my project ‘At the Feet of Rostam’ springs from. I wanted to capture this ancient routine of training and rituals, which are so carefully interwoven.
The photographic work of the late Sadegh Tirafkan, particularly his series ‘Zoorkhaneh’ which tried to capture the spirit and attitude of the Pahlevan’s. As explained in Tavoos Online – “In Zoorkhaneh (2003-4) which is Islamized Mithraic temples where ever since then men made their body as well as their mind, and has been the cradle of many orders of knighthood and other masculine cults, Tirafkan tries to show that although ‘the same environment and looks are kept, but not the same spirit and attitude.”
Wrestler in a Zoorkhaneh / Tehran 2014
My aim is to conjure up a vivid and evocative series of moving images, that extract this rich historical and spiritual essence of Varzesh-e Pahlavani, dedicating scenes to each ritual, to each poem and bringing to life a manifestation of masculine divinity.