TEHRAN – An exhibition titled “The March of the Sun” will open to the public today at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMCA) to display photos of Iranian deserts by Mohammadreza Javadi.

In a press conference held at the museum on Sunday, TMCA director Majid Mollanoruzi, the director of Iran’s Research Institute for Cultural Heritage and Tourism, Mohammad Beheshti, film critic Akbar Alami, and filmmaker Mohammadreza Aslani elaborated on different aspects of the exhibit.

“A selection of 70 photos by Javadi alongside works by Iranian masters, also focusing on Iranian deserts, and being kept in the treasure vault of the museum, will go on display at the exhibit,” Mollanoruzi said.

The works by the masters belong to Parviz Kalantari, Sohrab Sepehri, Reza Naami, Ebrahim Jafari and several others, he added.

“The project of the desert is our youngest project. It contains photos taken between 1984 and 2013. My colleagues and I have been working in an institute doing research about the culture of Iran. We have completed about 40 projects, and this is one of them,” Javadi said at the conference.

For his part, Alami promised that the exhibit would be one of the best of its kind and would remain in the mind of every visitor. “This exhibit will make you feel proud and make you think more about your homeland,” Alami said.

“When we don’t think correctly about the desert, it means that we do not belong to our homeland. If we want to be happy, we need to belong to this land. People like Javadi have helped us take a step in this direction. He has become friends with the desert and has revealed the real image of the desert. He has actually composed poetry by means of his photos of deserts,” Beheshti remarked.

For his part, Aslani also said that the photos will help the visitors remember part of their culture, adding, “We learned through deserts not to fight with nature, but to make nature.”

The exhibit will be running until October 26 at the museum located on North Kargar St., next to Laleh Park.

RM/YAW