TEHRAN – A photo exhibition opened last Tuesday in Tehran to showcase photos of the shrine of Imam Reza (AS), the eighth Imam of the Shia.

The Mehrsun Complex is organizing the exhibit to celebrate the birthday of Imam Reza (AS), which falls this year on June 11.  

Entitled “Affection for the Eight”, the exhibition is putting on view 75 photographs depicting pilgrims visiting the holy shrine of Imam Reza (AS) and scenes from the beauty of the religious site.

The exhibition is being organized with contributions from the Astan Qods Razavi, the organizational custodian of the holy shrine of Imam Reza (AS) in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad.

“Everybody doesn’t have the chance to go on pilgrimage to Mashhad,” Alireza Janeh, an Astan Qods Razavi official, said at the opening ceremony for the exhibition.

“By this exhibit, we intend to create the spiritual atmosphere of pilgrimage for the visitors of the exhibition,” he noted.

“The organizers and the photographers participating in this exhibition all feel affection for Imam Reza (AS), and I was impressed by their photos,” he added.

Janeh said that although the call for organizing the exhibition was published only in late May, yet the collection shows that the photographers have made great efforts to take the photos.

Seyyed Ali Hosseini, the director of the Office for Relationship between the Government and Parliament, also attended the opening ceremony.

“Only divine artworks remain eternal… if you study art schools around the globe you see that only those who create artworks for the sake of God endured in people’s memory,” he noted.

The ceremony went on with honoring the top photos of the exhibition, which will be running until June 15.

First prize was given to Amir-Ali Javadian, who was followed by Hamid Azizi and Hamidreza Habibi.

Hamed Khalili, Mostafa Yusefi and Hadi Dehqanpur received honorable mentions.

The birthday of the eighth Imam of the Shia is celebrated by a wide variety of cultural programs in different Iranian provinces during the Imam Reza (AS) International Festival.

The ten-day festival opens every year with the birthday celebration of Hazrat Masumeh (SA), the sister of the Imam (AS), at her holy shrine in Qom and ends with honoring a number of top artists on his birthday in Mashhad.

Photo: People visit the exhibition “Affection for the Eight” at the Mehrsun Complex in Tehran. (Honaronline/Gata Ziatabari)

MMS/YAW