از ا۱۰-۱۵ روز پیش، اندکی کسالت روحی و نگرانی و غیره، مانع دنابل کردن اخبار کارتونی شد.
امیدوارم از فردا شروع کنم.

این مطلب را به درخواست دارل کیگل برای وبلاگ کارتونی سلیت نوشتم.

December 10, 2004
 The tragic business of cartooning in Iran

I hate to present myself as a victim, but I can't find any other description for my life as an Iranian editorial cartoonist.

Being imprisoned for a cartoon, and receiving death threats and appearing on different death lists can't be named healthy or peaceful at all.

Iranian cartooning is about 100 years old, and the ideas are mostly based on Iranian political issues, of course the ones that would be approved by the government or the judiciary as well.

Seven years ago, when president Khatami started his first term, we were experiencing a great change: criticizing the power without being scared, through our cartoons. This freedom wasn't an absolute one, therefore we were not permitted to draw the clerics, and they were our limits.

We couldn't draw anything related to the grand Ayatollah Khamanei who is the leader, and never talk about the military. The good part was that every newly published paper wanted to have it's own cartoons, and there weren't as many cartoonists who could draw editorial cartoons for them, so for instance, I had to draw three cartoons for three different papers a day.

Eventually, when the hard-liners felt their reduction of power in the political competition, they started to gain it again through the courts, by arresting journalists and political activists, that was a threat to the rest of Khatami's supporters.

When in February of 2000, I was arrested and sent to "Evin", the Middle East's most notorious prison, for a cartoon that had attacked the anti-Freedom-of-the-Press" hard-liners, I could predict the death of the freedom we experienced just for a short period of time.

Years passed, and jobs were lost, because many papers were banned. The newly published papers needed cartoons, but were scared of publishing political ones. The readers wanted more, and the publishers were offering less, which was the only way for them to survive. Before, we had to have our cartoons censored, but in this time, we were censoring ourselves, and that was very painful.

Last year when I had to leave Iran for Canada, there were more than 20 editorial cartoonists working for the press.

Today, a dozen of them have lost their jobs, this time not for the banning, but for the sake of fear. The publishers do not dare having hot shots working for them, and to avoid being shut down, they try not to publish political cartoons.
The only free cartoonist in Iran, is the one working for the hard-liner daily, "Keyhan," who has the freedom to attack reformists and liberals.

A few of us have had our websites to exhibit our cartoons without having them published in the papers, but recently when the judiciary started arresting bloggers and forcing them to announce their involvement in a conspiracy against the Islamic Republic and it's values, the independent cartoonists had to keep quiet again, and that has been their constant strategy.

Nowadays, self censorship has become the rule, and the Iranian cartoonists are respecting it, in other words, that's their only choice to remain in the business.

They have the rights to remain silent, of course without hiring an attorney (the attorney might go to prison as well!).

I could be an example for the newcomers in Iran, the one who was successful, and now in exile, working in a dry cleaners and losing his family and almost everything. It's not a good choice.

Nik Kowsar, e-mail Nik

هنوز فرصت نکرده‌ام مصاحبه را ترجمه کنم، فعلا متن اصلی را می‌گذارم تا بعد:
Who had the most technical influence on you

The first time I saw Mad Magazine I was a ten year old living in western Canada. I knew immediately this was the most important art form in the history of human civilization. I loved Mort Drucker’s caricature and the mad genius in the whole enterprise. I especially loved their biting attack on consumer society and the advertising ‘culture’ that surrounded us but was largely accepted without criticism at that time. As I grew older and entered university I came into contact with the work of American editorial cartoonists like Jeff MacNelly, Pat Oliphant , Don Wright and Mike Peters. Once again the experience was like a religious revelation. So much talent and hilarious satire. I thought this was a rare discovery until I attended my first Association of American Editorial Cartoonists convention in 1983 and found out every single living breathing North American of my age demographic had the same passion for their work. So much for unique background inspiration

How do you compare American & Canadian editorial
cartooning

There was a time, perhaps twenty years ago, when Canadian cartoonists felt their professional standards were consistently higher than their fellow artists to the south. The work of Canadians Roy Peterson, Duncan MacPherson and Terry Mosher made it easy to defend this view . Today I think there is less of a divide in terms of work quality. This is largely due to an infusion of very talented young artists like Matt Davies and Ann Telnaes in the US

American cartoonists seem to be widely separated by political ideologies ( liberal VS conservative ) much more than Canadians who are largely clustered around the political middle ground. A joke comes to mind of a set of faucets …on the left ‘ cold’ on the right ‘ hot’ and in the middle ‘ Canadian’. I think this common political ground lowers the kind of tension that in the States contributes to a more aggressive satire

The fact that Canada currently has such a low international profile makes it easy for its artists to comment on other peoples’ travails but doesn’t guarantee that the work always has passion or powerful convictions

The exception to this is in the regional animosities continually festering in Canada…east VS west…Quebec VS everybody…etc. etc. This has proven to be a reliable source of biting sarcasm and intense emotion since confederation in 1867

What's your idea on Iranian cartoons
Given that Canada has under thirty fulltime editorial cartoonists the
first thing that impressed me when viewing the web sites Nik recommended was the large number of working Iranian artists. Not only large in numbers but consistently visually sophisticated with a strong sense of design and color

The work frequently has a European sensibility more than North American. The spare backgrounds and powerful graphic compositions remind me of the work coming from the former Yugoslavia, Romania and Poland. It possesses excellent use of symbolism and biting wit and is less reliant on dialogue and labels than we are in North America

I was quite taken with a number of artists and their work…too many to mention but several come to mind. Kambiz Derambakhsh has a great web site ( love his five year old portrait contrasted with the contemporary pic ) and his mature confidence of line, form and color. Massoud Shojai’s instinct for experiment and his mastery of watercolor impressed. Touka Neyestani is masterful. There are so many other excellent artists that I’m not comfortable singling out only a few

It was fascinating going through the various sites and I’m left with the powerful feeling that there is a large and thriving community of excellent Iranian satirical art being produced today