Legendary Iranian photographer Abbas joined journalist and filmmaker Maziar Bahari in a conversation at the Frontline Club on 3 February 2016, chaired by CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer.

Bahari and Abbas have collaborated to launch abbas.site, a platform showcasing Abbas’s photographic body of work on Iran since 1970, including his coverage of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Legendary photographer Abbas & @maziarbahari at @frontlineclub to talk about our new website https://t.co/bZLo4xtbIW pic.twitter.com/6mhEP8fXJx

— JournoIsNotACrime (@JournoNotACrime) February 3, 2016

Abbas’s work includes “the most iconic photos of Iranian history between 1971 and 2005,” said Bahari. “He shows parts of Iran in one photograph in a way that some people have to write many books about.”

“This is the first time I’m showing contact sheets,” said Abbas, as he showed his images of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s Persepolis celebration in 1971. “Normally photographers don’t show them. It’s like your personal diary, but I thought after 37 years, I can show not just the photos, but what led to the photos.”

“I wanted to show the complexity of Iran through the complexity of the lives of 12 Iranians. One would lead to another, like a circle. But the revolution started, and that was the end of the work.”

“How did you make sure you didn’t get hurt when the revolution turned violent?” asked Palmer.

“Well, I ran fast!” said Abbas.

“Some of the violence and hate which emerged later was already written on [the revolutionaries’] faces,” Abbas said, on the subject of his work in the early stages of the Islamic Revolution in 1977.

He showed his photos of Iranian Prime Minister Hoveyda at home, and then in a morgue shortly after his execution by the Revolutionary Guard in 1979.

“Although you feel very strongly for the man on the slab, you still do your work as a photographer. You try to compose the best picture… In all situations of strife or violence or emotional upheaval, you put a curtain between you and what’s happening. Because if you don’t, you can’t function,” he said.

“As a photographer, you don’t think, you just act. You capture energies you’re not even aware of. It’s when you do the editing and the sequencing that you become conscious.

“The act of photography is very intuitive. Your intuition is fed by your education, your culture, by the argument you had with your girlfriend the night before… that makes you take this picture instead of that one.”

Khomeini’s return to Iran in 1979, captured by Abbas @frontlineclub pic.twitter.com/7jdRut7I3y

— Charlotte Beale (@CharlotteAGB) February 3, 2016

Abbas commented that great photography is a combination of two things – “information and aesthetics.”

“When the two come together, in a suspended moment, that’s it. I don’t freeze the moment, I suspend it. I like to give the impression to my reader that the people in my photograph kept on doing the thing they were doing before I took the photograph.”

On the subjectivity of his work, Abbas commented: “the difference between a militant and a photographer [is that] the militant has his own agenda. The photographer, although he feels strongly, has a duty to his readers and also as a historian of the present, to be as fair as possible.”

In response to a question on how he manages his presence as a photographer, Abbas responded: “as much as possible, you try only to be a witness, not a partisan. Sometimes it’s hard, because of course they know what you are when you have a camera in your hand.”

In response to an audience member who asked what model of camera he prefers, Abbas said, “my favourite camera is my eye. It works very well.”

The discussion then moved to Abbas‘s references as a photographer, with Bahari commenting: “when you ask about Abbas‘s icons he doesn’t talk about Cartier-Bresson – he talks about Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Cezanne, who really painted life.”

On the methods of the photographer, Abbas commented: “Instead of writing with words, you write with light.”

Visit abbas.site to view the project in full. 

Abbas was born a photographer. A member of the legendary Magnum Photo Agency, his work since 1970 covering wars and revolutions in Biafra, Bangladesh, Northern Ireland, Vietnam, the Middle East, Chile, Cuba, and South Africa during apartheid is well known.

Yet it is his work from Iran, his country of birth, that is transcendent. In an extraordinary body of work spanning from the 1970s to his return in 1997 after 17 years of exile, his photographs capture every level of Iranian politics and society – from the Shah and his men to the streets of Tehran.

To mark the launch of a website that brings together this body of work, Abbas will be joining us in conversation with journalist and filmmaker Maziar Bahari, who produced the website, to show and discuss his photographs. Chaired by CBS News correspondent, Elizabeth Palmer.

Photo: Tehran, Iran. Armed militants outside the United States Embassy, where diplomats had been held hostage since 4 November, 1979. In the background is a banner displaying the American Statue of Liberty.

By Nicole Hunt

Though it’s sometimes difficult to keep track of which Silvio Berlusconi trial is currently in court, Monday sees the resumption of the most infamous of his four cases, in which he faces charges for abuse of power and paying for underage sex. The Italian Senate has approved a motion to move the case from Milan’s court to a special minister’s court, but the case remains in Milan while the Constitutional Court mulls the Senate’s request.

The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly opens, with more attention than usual being paid this time around. On Tuesday, the Assembly debates a motion that would recommend taking action against pre-natal sex selection in Europe, particularly in Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, where the ratio of girls to boys in the population is dropping. On Thursday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the assembly.

Following a meeting of Eurogroup Finance Ministers on Monday, all EU Finance Ministers convene in Luxembourg on Tuesday, with the focus, as with many things this week, squarely on Greece. Discussions are also expected on an EU financial transaction tax, after the European Commission published proposals last week.

In direct response to the austerity measures being so closely watched by the European Finance Ministers, Greek public sector workers hold a 24-hour strike on Wednesday, calling the cuts ‘barbaric’. A general strike is also planned for 19 October.

Meanwhile, in Brussels, German Chancellor Angela Merkel attends the weekly meeting of the European College of Commissioners. At NATO headquarters, NATO Defence Ministers hold a regular meeting to discuss operational issues, with Libya topping the agenda.

Former Bosnian-Serb Army Commander Ratko Mladic is back in court in The Hague on Thursday. Since his last appearance on 25 August, Mladic’s lawyers have requested the names of all 7,000 victims of the Srebrenica massacre as part of their opposition to the indictment.

In Johannesburg, the African National Congress’ disciplinary committee resumes hearing the charges against controversial youth leader Julius Malema, who is accused of interrupting an ANC Officials meeting alongside three other men. Malema faces separate charges of bringing the ANC into disrepute and sowing divisions within ANC ranks, which will be heard separately once this case has concluded. It’s currently scheduled to last two days, but has already been delayed several times.

Friday is, oddly, both the 10 year anniversary of the beginning of the War in Afghanistan and also the date for the announcement of the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. Anti-war activists hold mass demonstrations in London and Washington on Saturday, while the Peace Prize will be presented to the winner on 10 December.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu celebrates his 80th birthday and a year since he stepped down from public duties. Three days of celebrations are being held in Cape Town, and a new biography is being released to mark the day.

Spanish ‘indignant’ activists who have marched 1500km from Madrid are scheduled to arrive in Brussels on Saturday to hold a demonstration against unrepresentative politics. The protesters, who are joined by counterparts from across Europe, plan to hold a week of events, culminating in a large rally on 15 October.

Two elections take place on Sunday: voters in Poland elect 460 members to their lower house and 100 members to their upper house of parliament, while in Cameroon voters elect their president for the next seven years. Incumbent Paul Biya is only the second president since independence in 1960, and has held the post since 1982.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is in Zimbabwe on Sunday, making him the first high-profile UK official to visit the country since 2001. The visit is part of a three-country pastoral tour which also includes Malawi and Zambia. Williams is expected to meet with President Robert Mugabe, and is scheduled to hold a special service for members of the Anglican Church who have not joined a splinter movement set up by the former Bishop of Harare.

Once a year, the world’s leaders descend on New York for the UN’s blue ribbon event, the cumbersomely-titled UN General Assembly’s General Debate.

This year, the build-up has been dominated by the Palestinian Authority’s planned bid to become the 194th member of the UN, following South Sudan’s incorporation earlier in the year.

Notwithstanding any last minute deals, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will personally submit the application to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday, September 23, after Abbas has delivered his speech to assembled leaders.

Indeed, Friday’s session is set to be a cracker, since it also features Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s speech, in which he must surely address the issue. And yet while the Palestinian membership-issue is grabbing all the headlines, there’s plenty of other highlights.

Ahead of the formal UNGA opening today, there was a high-level meeting on Libya yesterday, the first since the UN formally recognised the Transitional National Council as the official representative of Libya last Friday. 

US President Barack Obama met privately for the first time with TNC Chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil, and held separate summits with President Hamid Karzai before he returned to Aghanistan to join the mourning of the assassinated leader Burhanuddin Rabbani.

Tuesday also saw French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe host a ministerial-level meeting of the so-called Deauville Partnership, a G20-offshoot dedicated to supporting fledgling Arab democracies.

The Debate kicks off today with an address by the Brazilian President, the first for Dilma Rousseff since she took office in January and no doubt a welcome relief from domestic troubles.

A notable absence, though, is Russian leader Dmitry Mevedev, who has chosen to delegate responsibilities this year to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

In the afternoon South Africa’s Jacob Zuma will be speaking. On Thursday morning, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gives his traditionally polemical speech (who can forget last year, when he alluded to the 9/11 attacks being a conspiracy). British Prime Minister David Cameron also speaks that session.

Highlights from the afternoon session on Thursday include an inaugural address by newly-elected Peruvian President Ollanta Humala, an address from ageing despot Robert Mugabe, and also remarks from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose star is in the ascendancy amid Turkey’s role in the Arab Spring.

On the sidelines that day, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is hosting a UN High-Level Meeting on Nuclear Safety and Security, likely to focus significantly on lessons to be learned from the crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant back in March. Friday, as we’ve seen, is all about the Palestinian-membership issue.

But in the morning there is also a first-time address from new Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda , who is expected to put in appearance also at the nuclear safety meeting. That afternoon South Sudanese President Salva Kiir – who meets one on one with President Obama earlier in the week – will give his country’s address for the first time since it became member number 193 last July

Sadly, one of the traditionally more entertaining speakers – Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez – is not expected to make the journey to New York this time, as he is recovering from a fourth round of chemotherapy for cancer discovered earlier in the year.

By Nicole Hunt

Anders Behring Breivik, the man who admitted to setting off the 22 July bomb in Oslo, killing eight people, before killing 69 people on the island of Utoya, makes his first public appearance at Oslo City Court on Monday. On 12 September, the court rejected a police request for another closed door hearing, meaning media and victims’ families will be able to attend.

In Geneva, the UN Global Fund releases the findings of a four-month independent review into its financial safeguards, following accusations of mismanagement of funds in recipient countries.

Monday is also the six month anniversary of the beginning of military action in Libya. Forces from the US, the UK, France, Canada, UAE and Qatar began enforcing the no-fly zone authorised by UN Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973 on 19 March.

The trial of seven Italian scientists charged with manslaughter for failing to predict the April 2009 earthquake that killed over 300 people kicks off in L’Aquila on Tuesday. The scientists, who made up the city’s Great Risks Commission, are accused of failing to warn people of the potential risk of an earthquake and convincing people not to leave town a week before the earthquake struck.

In a Paris court, former News of the World chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck and representatives for News Group Newspapers appear charged with breaching France’s privacy and defamation laws in relation to a 2008 story about former FIA president Max Mosley. Mosley was awarded £60,000 in damages by the UK High Court in 2008, but the European Court of Human Rights rejected an application by Mosley in May that would have required media to inform a person before publishing a story containing their private information.

Amid concerns of potential post-election violence, Zambians go to the polls to elect their president and members of the National Assembly. Levy Mwanawasa won the 2006 election, but died in August 2008 and was replaced by Rupiah Banda, who is seeking his first full term.

The UN General Assembly general debate opens in New York on Wednesday, with all eyes on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who, barring last-minute diplomatic developments, is expected to seek a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood.

On Thursday, a verdict is expected in the first case brought in under France’s ‘burka ban’ laws. Two women in the town of Meaux were arrested for wearing the niqab veil in May, with one of them banned from attending the last hearing because her face was still covered.

At the UN General Assembly, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe are both scheduled to speak. Ahmadinejad’s past speeches have prompted walkouts from some delegations, while Mugabe’s have typically been anti-western. British Prime Minister David Cameron, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ivorian President Alassane Ouatarra are also on the bill.

The week draws to a close with some high-profile court hearings and elections. Closing arguments are set to begin in Amanda Knox’s murder appeal in Perugia on Friday, while Egyptian courts are busy with the testimony of ruling military council member Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi at former President Hosni Mubarak’s trial on Saturday in Cairo, as well as the verdict in the Khaled Said murder trial in Alexandria. Two policemen are on trial for Said’s June 2010 death, which prompted widespread protests in Egypt at a time when police were rarely prosecuted.

In Bahrain, by-elections are held to replace 11 opposition lawmakers who resigned in March over government crackdowns on anti-regime protesters.

French Senate elections take place on Sunday, with half of the 346 seats up for grabs. Party performances will be closely watched ahead of next year’s presidential elections.

In Freiburg, Pope Benedict XVI wraps up a four-day visit to Germany to celebrate the 60th anniversary of his ordination as a priest