Review · Baang
The workers behind the photograph
Khalili reads a refinery story through the relations between workers, machinery and power.
- Credited to
- Nasim Khalili
- Publication
- Baang
- Source date
- 15 August 2026
- Published language
- Persian
- This page
- English source guide
Works discussed
English reading guide to the attributed original publication. The source’s critical judgments and reported statements remain those of its credited speaker or writer.
Whose achievement is remembered?
Nasim Khalili’s wider essay discusses the social and economic history of science, using Boris Hessen’s account of Newton as its starting point. In a substantial literary comparison, she turns to Rabihavi’s A Commemorative Photograph, citing Incident at the Central Workshop, 1358, pages 49 and 52. Source 1
She describes refinery workers who have helped construct a large Merox installation. Managers pose beside it for an official photograph, while a worker bringing a camera to preserve his colleagues’ own achievement is arrested. Khalili locates the conflict in the social relations around the machine: work, recognition and control over the image. Source 1
Khalili’s comparison attends to the worker’s wish to carry an image of that shared achievement back to his family. The story lets her connect the machinery’s place in production with the recognition given to the people who built it. The interpretation remains her reading of Rabihavi’s fiction. Source 1
Sources & credits
- Nasim Khalili · science, workers and a photograph
Baang essay, 15 August 2026. Its substantive Rabihavi passage discusses A Commemorative Photograph and cites Incident at the Central Workshop, 1358, pages 49 and 52. The originating article body is retained in Baang’s complete post record.