About Sepid o Siah

Sepid o Siah

Sepid o Siah, also transliterated Sipid u Siyah and translated White and Black, was a popular Iranian weekly magazine published in Tehran. The British Library's Endangered Archives Programme, which preserves the title among its pre-1979 Iranian performance arts journals, records that it began its activity in 1953 under the management of Ali Behzadi and that its run in the archive extends from 1953 to 1979. The magazine first appeared around the 1953 coup that overthrew the government of Mohammad Mosaddeq, and it grew into one of the widely read illustrated weeklies of Pahlavi Iran, known for cultural coverage that included film criticism by Parviz Davayi and cartoons by a young Kambiz Derambakhsh. After the 1979 revolution, state journalists of the Islamic Republic accused the magazine of supporting the Pahlavi government, an accusation that itself testifies to the prominence Sepid o Siah had achieved.

Foundation in 1953

Sipid u Siyah was a weekly periodical that began its activity in 1953 under the management of Ali Behzadi. The timing was charged: the magazine first appeared around the 1953 coup that overthrew the Mosaddeq government, the event that restored the authority of Mohammad Reza Shah and reshaped Iranian politics and the press for the following quarter century. A popular weekly founded in that moment entered a media landscape in which illustrated magazines were becoming central to urban reading life, carrying photography, cinema coverage, cartoons and social reporting to a mass audience. The British Library catalogue dates the preserved run from 1953 to 1979, with 52 issues recorded for the first year alone, consistent with a true weekly rhythm from the start.

Title and identity

The name Sepid o Siah means White and Black, and the title is also rendered Sipid va Siyah in modern Persian transliteration. Under that name the magazine is visible in the digital record of the Iranian revolution itself: the digitised newspaper collection created by the University of Manchester and shared through JSTOR's Nashriyah project presents the 1 November 1978 edition of Sipid va Siyah as an example of the press on the eve of the Shah's fall. The survival of that late issue in an international archive underlines that the magazine was still publishing through the revolutionary crisis of 1978, at the very end of the Pahlavi press era.

A popular weekly of Pahlavi Iran

The batch record for Sepid o Siah describes it as a popular weekly known for its wide readership and cultural influence, published in Tehran from the 1950s through the 1970s. That characterisation fits the magazine's archival neighbourhood: the British Library's Iranian Performance Arts Journals project groups Sepid o Siah with Ettelaat-e Banovan, Tehran Mosavar, Tufiq, Negin and the cinema journals Honar va Cinema, Film va Honar and Setare-ye Cinema, the illustrated and performance-arts press of pre-1979 Iran. Within that company Sepid o Siah represented the general popular weekly, mixing social coverage, arts and entertainment in a format designed for a broad urban readership rather than for a party, a profession or a literary circle.

Film criticism and Parviz Davayi

The magazine is specifically remembered for publishing film criticism by Parviz Davayi. Davayi was one of the distinctive critical voices of Iranian cinema culture in the decades before 1979, and his presence in Sepid o Siah shows that a mass-market weekly could carry serious writing about film alongside lighter material. Iranian cinema expanded greatly in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and the popular press was where most readers encountered discussion of new films, stars and directors. A weekly that employed a critic of Davayi's standing connected its entertainment pages to the emerging critical culture that the specialist film journals of the same archive, such as Film va Honar and Honar va Cinema, served in a narrower way.

Cartoons and Kambiz Derambakhsh

Sepid o Siah also published cartoons by a young Kambiz Derambakhsh, who became one of Iran's best-known cartoonists and graphic artists. That a leading figure of Iranian cartooning appeared in the magazine while still young illustrates the role of the popular weeklies as training grounds for visual artists: before gallery and book careers, cartoonists reached the public through the pages of mass-circulation magazines. Academic study of the magazine's visual culture confirms the importance of its cartoon pages. A scholarly article on cartoon imagery in Sipid u Siyah examines its comic treatment of the Haji Firuz figure and of siya bazi, the blackface performance tradition, analysing how the magazine's cartoons used speech balloons, dialect humour and provincial characters to stage the disjunctions of Iranian modernity for its readers.

The magazine and the 1953 settlement

Because Sepid o Siah began around the 1953 coup, its relationship to the restored Pahlavi order became part of its record. The British Library summary notes that state journalists of the Islamic Republic accused the magazine of supporting the Pahlavi government. The accusation should be read as it is presented, as a post-revolutionary charge by journalists of the new state rather than as a neutral finding, but it reflects a real condition of the post-1953 popular press: mass weeklies operated within the boundaries of a monarchy that censored political opposition, and successful titles were liable after 1979 to be characterised as regime-supporting. Sepid o Siah's longevity from 1953 to the end of the monarchy meant that its entire life unfolded inside that settlement.

The final years and the revolution

The archive run of Sepid o Siah extends to 1979, and issue-level records continue through that year, with preserved issues running to many dozens of pages. The November 1978 edition preserved in the Nashriyah collection shows the magazine publishing as strikes, demonstrations and political crisis consumed the country. In the months after the Shah's overthrow, Iranian news media briefly flourished in what the JSTOR Daily account of the Nashriyah archive calls a tentative spring of freedom, with the number of newspapers rising from about 100 at the time of the revolution to more than 700 within a year. For established Pahlavi-era weeklies the new order brought scrutiny rather than opportunity, and Sepid o Siah's run closed with the world that had created it.

Archival preservation

Sepid o Siah survives for researchers principally through the British Library's Endangered Archives Programme project EAP1200, Iranian Performance Arts Journals, which digitised pre-1979 Iranian periodicals including Sepid o Siah under reference EAP1200/1/5, with more than a thousand file-level records for the title reaching from 1953 to 1979. The project's parent collection covers the period 1923 to 1979 and describes its purpose as preserving journals that document Iranian performance arts and popular culture before the revolution. The University of Manchester's Nashriyah collection, shared via JSTOR, adds further digitised issues, including the November 1978 edition, placing Sepid o Siah within the documentary record of the revolution itself. Without these projects, a popular weekly printed on inexpensive paper would be far harder to study.

Place among Iranian popular magazines

Among the magazines of Pahlavi Iran, Sepid o Siah occupied the popular centre. It was not a literary journal like Yaghma or Armaghan, not a satirical institution like Towfiq, and not a specialist cinema title, but a general weekly whose wide readership gave cultural weight to its film criticism, its cartoons and its social coverage. Its contributors connect it to two major strands of Iranian visual and critical culture: Parviz Davayi's film writing and Kambiz Derambakhsh's early cartoons. Its dates, 1953 to 1979, coincide almost exactly with the restored monarchy's lifespan, which is why post-revolutionary critics judged it politically and why historians can read its pages as a record of ordinary cultural life under that order.

Legacy

Sepid o Siah was published in Tehran from 1953, under the management of Ali Behzadi, until the end of the Pahlavi era. It was known for wide readership and cultural influence, published film criticism by Parviz Davayi, gave early space to the cartoonist Kambiz Derambakhsh, and was still appearing in November 1978 as the revolution approached. Accused after 1979 by state journalists of supporting the Pahlavi government, it disappeared with the press order that had sustained it. Its extensive preservation in the British Library's Endangered Archives and in the Nashriyah digital collection ensures that White and Black remains accessible as one of the representative popular weeklies of pre-revolutionary Iran.