Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma

An Icon but Not a Revolution

By Reza Afshari

A young woman, with her stunning eyes wide open, dies on the pavement, taking her last breath and muttering, “I am burning.” Depictions of graphic, bloody, and often senseless street violence hardly serve a constructive purpose as they are brought into our living rooms each evening. But the image of Neda Agha-Soltan dying in a street in Tehran presents something radically different: visual evidence of the passing of a significant moment in Iran’s tumultuous history. More »