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For much of his working life, Kaveh Golestan's pictures were suppressed in his native Iran but he continued to provide the rest of the world with a unique view of what was happening there.
For this edition's Close-Up, Bill Kouwenhoven profiles this legendry photojournalist.
"These eyes-- my eyes-have been witness to the harshness of reality in my country. My camera records the truth."
Kaveh Golestan (1950-2003)
The son of one of Iran's leading film-makers and novelists, and the grandson of a journalist, it seems Kaveh Golestan was born to become an award-winning news image maker.
For thirty years, he covered modern Iran's most turbulent period: from the overthrow of the Shah, through the Khomeini-led revolution, the Iran-Iraq war and on to the beginning of the Second Gulf War.
His BBC colleague Jim Muir said of him, "His energy, artistry, enthusiasm, sensitivity, courage and mischievous humor were only part of a complex, charming and gentle character, who engaged all he met."
Born in Abadan in south-west Iran and educated in Tehran and in England, Golestan first helped with his father's filming at the age of 11.
By 1972 he was a self-taught photojournalist producing work for numerous Iranian and international publications, authoring several books and exhibiting.
According to his widow, Hengameh, Golestan was "very affected by suffering in society and was always drawn towards subjects that were unapproachable or deemed taboo."
His images of farmers and laborers show conditions under the Shah's regime with tenderness and directness. His pictures of the brothels of Sharh-e No (1976-77) and the children's asylum at Shahr-e Ray (1977), both in Tehran, are harsh indictments of the system and earned him the enmity of the state and questioning by SAVAK, the Shah's secret police.
His works were banned from galleries and museums so he posted his images in public on walls and in university corridors.
Covering riots in Qom, the religious center of Iran, and the violent uprising against the Shah in 1979, he called them "the very first sparks of the revolution".
His pictures of the triumphal arrival of the smiling Ayatollah Khomeini and his funeral in 1989 are both vital political documents and works of art.
He was awarded a gold plaque by Khomeini himself in 1979. His pictures from the Revolution, which, to protect his life, were published anonymously abroad in Time Magazine and elsewhere, won the Robert Capa Gold Medal a year later.
From then on, his work mostly chronicled the disasters of war: Scud attacks on Tehran and elsewhere, war in the trenches and the suffering of civilians and solders alike.
He called himself a war photographer and said it was his duty "to let the rest of the world know about these horrors, to understand the suffering."
In 1988, he was among the first to cover the aftermath of a massacre of Iraqi Kurds in the village of Halabja, where Saddam Hussein's jets gassed more than five thousand civilians.
It was with Kurds, in 1991, that Golestan had first put down his camera when he witnessed the execution of Ba'athist prisoners.
"Kaveh told me that this was the turning point, but he didn't really explain why. I assume he felt in some way implicated, that by being there with a camera he was not just a neutral witness, but perhaps a stimulant," suggests the BBC's Jim Muir.
Although Golestan's international reputation was forged by stills photography, he was hired to work as a video cameraman in Iraq by the BBC.
His wife Hengameh believes her husband was drawn to the technical and professional opportunities presented by video: "He knew that his film would be shown by satellite all over the world. You have to realize that, back in Iran, every picture he took with his camera had to be checked by the authorities."
He also worked for The Associated Press Television Networks, INT and CNN. It was on a BBC assignment that he was killed on 2 April 2003.
Like Robert Capa fifty years before him in Indochina, Kaveh Golestan stepped on a landmine and was killed while working. Jim Muir was with him and recalls him saying, just before he died: "When I am in situations like these, I feel I am me."
Masoud Behnoud, another BBC colleague says: "Kaveh's short but eventful life finished in the way he always believed it would-in the midst of news."
His wife Hengameh said Kaveh could "talk a snake out of its hole." It enabled him to charm laborers, prostitutes, dervishes and officials alike as he probed many aspects of society. He referred to his "revolutionary patience" in dealing with bureaucracy and political obstruction.
For him, "it was the job of a journalist to report the truth no matter what the consequences."
His press card was taken away three times and he was often subject to interrogation. His 1991 documentary about censorship in Iran made for British television, "Recording the Truth," was an act of resistance that led to his being unable to work as a journalist for two years.
Teaching photojournalism at Tehran University, he was described by Hojat Sepahvand - a former student - as "a mobile university" himself, sharing his knowledge and his cameras.
Time Magazine journalist Azadeh Moaveni called him "the bravest, most talented photojournalist I had ever known… With his unrivaled zest for poking into Iran's darkest corners, he taught me, and the Iranian journalists and photographers of my generation, that resistance could be an art and art could be resistance."
Kaveh Golestan lies buried in a simple graveyard in Afjeh, north Tehran. His epitaph reads: "He was killed while documenting the truth."
Bill Kouwenhoven
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Kaveh Golestan
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