Image Maker is the most comprehensive North American exhibition ever presented on the Iranian artist Abbas Kiarostami. The three-part exhibition, which is co-presented by The Museum of Modern Art and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, in collaboration with the Iranian Art Foundation, comprises 33 short and feature films (including premieres and newly struck prints), two media installation works, and an exhibition of photographs featuring selections from three separate series including Rain, being exhibited for the first time.

The moving image and photographic work of Abbas Kiarostami (Iranian, b. 1940) is characterized by a distinct personal style, employing contemplative, philosophical themes coupled with a lyrical translation of Neorealism into modernist terms. The retrospective in the Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters includes 33 of Kiarostami’s shorts and feature works, such as Through the Olive Trees (1994); A Taste of Cherry (1997), which won the Golden Palm at Cannes; The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), winner of the Grand Special Jury Prize at Venice; and Ten (2002). The media installation in MoMA’s Yoshiko and Akio Morita Gallery comprises separate projections of each of the five parts of the artist’s 2004 feature Five.

At P.S.1, the exhibition of Kiarostami’s photographic work, on which he has been concentrating since the mid-1990s, includes selected works from two celebrated series: Snow White (1978-2003) and Roads and Trees (1978-2003). Photographs from the new series Rain (2006) and Trees and Crows (2006) will also be exhibited. In addition, P.S.1 presents the premiere of the installation Summer Afternoon (2006).

Abbas Kiarostami: Image Maker is organized by Jytte Jensen, Curator, Department of Film, and Klaus Biesenbach, Chief Curator, Department of Media, The Museum of Modern Art, and Chief Curatorial Advisor, P.S.1.