TEHRAN -- The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art on Saturday opened “This Likeness Everlasting,” an exhibition drawn from its photography collection that traces the history of the medium, from the earliest experiments in image-making to photography’s emergence as an independent artistic language in modern and contemporary art.
The exhibition coincides with the 200th anniversary of the creation of the first photograph in the world and presents a new reading of one of the museum’s lesser-seen archival collections after a decade.
The opening ceremony was attended by Deputy Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance for Artistic Affairs Mehdi Shafiei; Deputy Head of the Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia Ahmad Masjedjamei; Director of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art Reza Dabirinejad; head of the Cinema Organization of Iran Raed Faridzadeh and diplomat and politician Majid Takht-Ravanchi.
Featuring works and archival documents from the museum’s collection, the exhibition brings together photographs ranging from early milestones in the history of photography to contemporary practices that explore the boundaries of the photographic image.
The selection includes works by some of the most influential figures in the history of photography, including Henry Fox Talbot, Nadar, Julia Margaret Cameron, Henry Peach Robinson, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, alongside contemporary artists such as Hans Bellmer, Lee Friedlander, William Wegman, David Hockney, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha and John Baldessari.
The exhibition also presents editions of Camera Work magazine, one of the most influential photography publications of the early 20th century, as well as photographs and preparatory sketches related to a 1977 project by Dennis Oppenheim. 
Conceived for realization in the natural landscape surrounding Tehran, the project was never executed due to the political and social transformations of the period.
Among the exhibition’s significant presentations are six historic albums shown publicly for the first time. The albums include portraits of political, cultural and artistic figures from Europe and the Ottoman Empire, along with photographs documenting everyday life in 19th-century Japan.
The albums also contain portraits of the first groups of Iranian students in Europe, regarded as among the earliest photographic records of Iranian faces.
Through historical photographs, archival materials and contemporary works, “This Likeness Everlasting” examines photography as both a document of time and a constantly evolving artistic medium shaped by memory, technology and visual culture.