Biography
Hossein Jafarian is an Iranian cinematographer and screenwriter. Born in Tehran in 1944, he studied at the Iran Broadcasting University and began his career working for Iranian state-run television, where he shot over 40 documentaries and television programmes before retiring soon after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
His feature-film debut came in the mid-1980s. He established himself as a leading cinematographer with Nargess (1992) and went on to shoot several acclaimed Iranian films, including Through the Olive Trees (1994), Crimson Gold (2003), Fireworks Wednesday (2006), About Elly (2009) and The Salesman (2016). He has worked with directors including Rakhshan Banietemad, Abbas Kiarostami and Asghar Farhadi.
Jafarian was voted best cinematographer of the Iranian decade 2001–2011 by film critics and was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2018, the first Iranian cinematographer to receive the honour. He is the author of the book Lens: In Photography and Cinematography.
