Mr. Rafieh’s Tehran Pencil Shop
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I only bring this up because I had a similar experience with these photos that I had locally. My Hudson Valley town is a delicate balance of many cultures (primarily white, black, and Central American) and our downtown reflects that blend. Most folks would be quick to dismiss one small storefront with a messy front window of leather goods, sculptures, and various Latin American flags, but inside is an expert leather craftsman from Ecuador who makes most of his products by hand.
I never would have bothered entering the store until a local photographer (once recognized as the "town's photo laureate") featured the store in a few social media posts. Some combination of sharing the craftsman's story and recognizing the beauty throughout the store struck the interest of the rest of the town. Suddenly the eccentric storefront became a destination for everyone (kind of like this colored pencil man's stall)
You just listed a couple tools for photography though. If anything they will lower the barrier of entry for photography and more people will participate (pretty much what happened)
Actually, smartphone cameras make photography even much more accessible. I don't want to sound old, but perhaps you remember 3 or 4 decades ago where all people took pictures with film. It's a limited media (usually 36 frames or less on bigger formats). No instant feedback (have to send them to film lab to be developed or do it on your own darkroom). And for some, indeed photography was a relatively expensive hobby.
Now the barrier is much much lower. Smartphone camera techs are getting better. And you don't need high end PC running Lightroom/Photoshop etc for image editing. Simply use smartphone apps. These are good enough for most of us, social media oriented persons.
Sure, if you want better image quality, eventually you'll upgrade to camera with bigger image sensor (M43, APSC etc) like the pros do.
I'd say smartphone cameras render compact digital point & shoot useless, instead.
Action and sports photography is an exception to this since you just click as many photos as you can to capture the right moment.
So I wonder if the explosion of digital cameras and smartphones have helped in creating better photographers. One argument could be that now there are lot more people who are taking up photography and some of them eventually will figure out the intricacies of the craft and become better photographers. Kind of like the 80-20 rule. On the flip side there is also a lot of noise (people just clicking photos), which is fine I think.
They say "you have a good eye."
The world of Colored pencils
Going through the narrow alleys of the stationary bazaar, there's a name that's familiar to all and an address that's hacked on all the tradespeople's minds. If you're looking for colored pencils, everyone'll point you to Mr. Rafieh's shop. "It's been thirty years that I get my energy from setting up kids with their colored pencil box. At the moment I have one of the biggest collections of colored pencils.", he says. Beginner and professional painters alike come to him for recommendations on colored pencils. The rare old models from the west or the ones produced in the country, he has them all. Mr. Rafieh's colorful stall has been drawing the attention of passerby for many years now.
It's possible, sure. But the risk of arbitrary detention would make it impossible to enjoy. The state department currently lists Iran as "Level 4: Do not travel", and suggests you have a will in order if you do [0]. There was a brief moment towards the end of the Obama era where it seemed things may have been thawing, but with the Soleimani assassination I don't have much hope for the future in that regard.
[0] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/...
Most people in Iran know there are a bunch of assholes running things there just like there are here. Daily life for most people there consists mostly of mundane things like colored pencils.
Travel requires treating irrational fears as irrational. If you want to go, you can find a way. Your life will be different afterwards because that's what any travel does.
The ways in which people change from travel is why Americans have been banned from Cuba for sixty years and Iran for forty.
N.B. the argument that Iran will falsely label you a 'spy' feels weak to me given the order of magnitude of such detentions in recent history is in the tens. It would be equally improbably that most of these detentions were false positives as plenty of foreign intelligence operations happen in any country. Especially given the amount of foreign-intelligence related sabotage in recent Iranian history.
Extremely respected engineer both in Iran and America, ran tech initiatives for youths in Iran, a key figure in international text rendering. No political activity, but he got arrested and coerced anyway because the Iranian government wanted to force him to become a spy.
He managed to escape, but it ruined his life and career.
Whether it is safe - or wise - to do so is another matter.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/...
I asked him once when it opened up again why he hadn't gone back. He said the trips are forced tours and that he wouldn't be free to get a car and revisit the haunts of his youth.
I made up my mind that I wouldn't visit Cuba until the communists were gone. I was pretty confident after Castro the government would fall. Now I am not so sure.
Unlike the rest of the world, Americans can only visit with organized tours.[0]
[0]Unless you've got some Persian relatives you're visiting.
[0]https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-tra...
Unfortunately like many middle-east countries the government is not representative of the people.
You may never see Iran...but not because you are an American. Instead, it is because Iran is a ticking time bomb.
Once the country opens back up, and it will open back up - you have to question whether there will be anything left to see.
Civil war is a nasty thing. See: Syria.
I recommend you visit now before its too late.
When I read your first paragraph I assumed you were referring to these mom and pop kinda shops going out of business once the economy develops, replacing them with cookie cutter malls or online retail.
Repression tends to lead to explosive results in the shape of civil war. See arab spring, syria, etc.
I don't think it has much to business (insofar tourism is concerned), but more about tourist sites being potentially destroyed.
I don't think so. Sure, its a dictatorship and flawed in many ways, but that doesn't mean the people are not happy.
Society will bear some amount of constant pressure, to a certain degree.
If that pressure progresses into a puncture, society will rupture.
So far, Iran doesn't seem to be in that situation.
Iran has been in its current state since 1979. That is 40 whole years. And we have not seen any major shifts in their society.
It looks stronger than ever, now that Iraq and Afghanistan (thanks to the trigger happy policy of America) are in the dumps, Iran is a strong and critical player.
P.S. I haven't visited Iran since high school over 12 years ago and I miss my friends and family there so much.
Some noname sets found randomly in clearance bins are so bad some of the colors could not be sharpened even once. Maybe I need a different kind of sharpener.
- It would be bombed and looted by foreign army ("In the name of democracy!")
- Hundreds of thousands of people will die from bombs, same amount from hunger and civil unrest caused by destruction of the infrastructure and government system (police, hospitals, etc.)
- Foreign companies will take control of Iran's oil (the main reason why Iran is considered "hostile country" now is that it controls its natural resources), so that profits from selling the oil flow to other countries (exactly the same happened recently in Libya and Syria)
It would become unsafe to visit, and most cities would be in ruins. Crime rates would go through the roof.
It would be better if fifteen hundred years of Islamophobia was disinfected from Europe. It's a double standard where nobody sees a problem with England even though there's a state religion and the religious head and government head are the same person...and unlike Iran, those roles are hereditary.
Iran today looks like what throwing off the yoke of foreign influence looks like. So far it has only been going on half as long as the Guerra de los Ochenta Años took to free the Netherlands from Spanish Influence.
Never mind the bloody legacy of Calvinism though. The traditional head of the European church launched the crusades and backed the long slog in the Iberian Peninsula.
So long as the first reaction is to frame Iran in religious terms, the Mullahs are logically correct in their claims about the enemy without.
> It's a double standard where nobody sees a problem with England even though there's a state religion and the religious head and government head are the same person...and unlike Iran, those roles are hereditary.
I don’t think that anyone familiar with both countries would consider that the rôle of the two is remotely comparable. The Queen’s influence, except when acting on the advice of the PM (i.e., doing precisely what the PM says), on the vast majority of policymaking is negligible. The Supreme Leader’s influence is much broader. The Supreme Leader chooses all sorts of important ministers (e.g., the interior and defence ministers). The IRGC directly reports to Khamanei and he does not direct it on the advice of the President.
As for the established church, it has barely any effect: at most, a few votes in the Lords (which under the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 can be overriden by the Commons.) Government policy and the wishes of the C of E are pretty clearly in tension, which is why e.g. Thatcher spent rather a lot of time criticising bishops for effectively calling her heartless. Meanwhile in Iran, all sorts of policies are dictated by the religious establishment, e.g., Qisas.
> Iran today looks like what throwing off the yoke of foreign influence looks like.
There are many ways to ‘throw off the yoke of foreign influence’ (and hopefully replace it with a healthy attitude towards foreign ideas.) I don’t think it’s incorrect to suggest that there are pretty substantial deficiencies in the seem not particularly to like the present path taken by the régime. See e.g. Ahmadinejad (presumably irked by being sidelined) on MEMRI (I know, I know),¹ or the election of Khatami and Rouhani (whose ambitions have often been thwarted by those you seem to be defending here.)
> Never mind the bloody legacy of Calvinism though. The traditional head of the European church launched the crusades and backed the long slog in the Iberian Peninsula.
This seems to be logically fallacious whataboutism—where do you get the idea that OP wants a return to Roman Catholic theocracy?
> So long as the first reaction is to frame Iran in religious terms, the Mullahs are logically correct in their claims about the enemy without.
Simply criticising the religious establishment as done above is common even amongst Iranians, so this seems to miss the point. Now, it may be that actually this is cover for some raving about Muslims generally or Iran qua an Islamic Republic as opposed to one say even less democratic than e.g. Pakistan or Bangladesh. But this comment seems to be a sort of reflexive defence against a certain sort of Islamophobic criticism which wasn’t actually made.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUW_XwvHQNw, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bOfDBoQ7yA
Among such legislation is the English church’s military arm engaging in the ongoing Irish religious war. A conflict that goes back to the time Henry VIII made his own church to sanction his divorce…so he could marry the first woman he is known to have killed.
More recently the English head of state created a new legal structure to harden the already armed religious border on Ireland.
doesn’t exist; presumably you mean either the UK parliament or the Legislative Grand Committee for England.
> is allowed to pass legislation to which the head of state consents
Case 1: you mean the UK parliament.
In this case, royal assent is a mere formality. The last refusal of royal assent was in 1708, and on the advice of the PM. Constitutional practice has changed since that time. Refusal of assent is an impossibility—in particular if it a purported refusal were on the advice of the PM; see Miller:
> This court is not, therefore, precluded by article 9 or by any wider Parliamentary privilege from considering the validity of the prorogation itself. The logical approach to that question is to start at the beginning, with the advice that led to it. That advice was unlawful. It was outside the powers of the Prime Minister to give it. This means that it was null and of no effect: see, if authority were needed, R (UNISON) v Lord Chancellor [2017] UKSC 51, para 119. It led to the Order in Council which, being founded on unlawful advice, was likewise unlawful, null and of no effect and should be quashed. This led to the actual prorogation, which was as if the Commissioners had walked into Parliament with a blank piece of paper. It too was unlawful, null and of no effect. —R (Miller) v PM [2019] UKSC 41 at para 69
Now the Guardian has recently published certain articles on Queen’s consent. I found its misuse regrettable. However, the scope of Queen’s consent is essentially the regulation of a very small fiefdom—probably less in value than e.g. a supermarket chain. This pales in comparison to e.g. control of defence and foreign policy, which the Supreme Leader and religious establishment have. Royal assent, therefore, provides no grounds for drawing an equivalence between Iran and the UK.
Case 2: you mean the Legislative Grand Committee for England.
The Legislative Grand Committees had no power to pass legislation to which a majority of the Commons was opposed.
> Among such legislation is the English church’s military arm engaging in the ongoing Irish religious war. A conflict that goes back to the time Henry VIII made his own church to sanction his divorce…so he could marry the first woman he is known to have killed.
There is no ‘ongoing Irish religious war’; it is an insult to the victims of the Troubles, the siege of Drogheda, etc. to suggest that present conflicts are remotely similar.
It is pretty hard to work out in these circumlocutions what you are actually referring to here, but I hazard that you are referring to the Irish border. You seem to ignore that, as I point out, HM Government does not exercise its powers on the advice of the Church of England, and indeed often the C of E is rather opposed to government policy (see e.g. _The Guardian_, 18 October 2020: ‘The Anglican church has publicly challenged the government’s willingness to break international law over Brexit, with five archbishops from Great Britain and Ireland joining together to condemn what could be a “disastrous precedent”.’)
> More recently the English head of state created a new legal structure to harden the already armed religious border on Ireland.
Nobody acts _qua_ the ‘English head of state’ because there is no such thing.
A fundamental mistake here is to see the acts of a reactionary but democratically elected government in the UK as _sui generis_ because monarchy is symbolically reactionary. When HM Government do stupid things, they do so in the same way any other Western government does stupid things. That laws begin with a recitation that they are enacted by ‘the Queen's most Excellent Majesty’ is a distraction.
Anyone note a list of his brands? I think I see some Faber-Castell but can't ID anything else.
However he does it, I don't think he is using a razor based sharpener, just look at the rough points in image 15.
Do you expect any reader of this comment to say to themselves "Ah, that's me!"?
ABSOLUTELY
>of Iran
...maybe not
It's why I like posts like this and loved National Geographic growing up; the feeling of realizing how narrow-minded and judgemental I can be getting dissolved by fascinating exposes and beautiful art and photography.
I'm wondering how well he knows his inventory. Like, can you ask for one particular pencil that's stuck in the middle of one of those shelves, and he goes and pulls it right out?
“Curious how these things happen. The [pencil] chooses the [writer], remember…”
For example, one of the labels says "oily pencils".
So perhaps when you go to him and ask for a purple pencil he pulls out a number of purple ones from the bunch that's relevant to you. Then he explains which one is better for you.
Does he make the pencils there?
I can't read the writing in the photos but it looks like there are no prices (I don't see any numbers). Can someone who is able to read this chime in?
I searched a bit online and I couldn’t find any online shop or price samples for the store.
This is their instagram page, but not sure if it adds any more information:
The pencils in this photo[1] say 'Germany', so my guess is no.
[1] https://www.ana.press/photo/548339/%D8%AF%D9%86%DB%8C%D8%A7%...
[R to L]: White Pencil. Tailor's White Pencil. White Oil Pencil.
One the side it says "single colored pencils 250 Tomans". The front matter appears to be a verse from Qur'an and below it in Farsi he declares he has 'entrusted all matters to God, the same God that is the protector of its creation'.
[[R to L]: Khaastan (To desire/wish) Tavaanestan (to have ability) Ast (is)]
That's a popular Iranian saying. It means "To desire/To will is to achieve." (Where there is a will, there is a way.)
(If you know languages, you posses the world.)
[1] https://media.ana.press/old/1399/09/24/637435501254726240_lg...