The Iranian Revolution, image © Kaveh Golestan, on show at the exhibition 165 years of Iranian photography at the musee du quai Branly, Paris.

The musee du quai Branly has put Iranian photography under the spotlight in one of its PhotoQuai exhibitions, with a show celebrating 165 years of work. The exhibition is curated by Bahman Sarbakhshian and Bahman Jalali, under the creative directorship of Iranian gallerist and this year's PhotoQuai curator Anahita Ghabaian Etehadieh, and it gives a brief outline of early photography in the country before turning its attention to photography during and after the 1979 revolution.

'We wanted to show that Iranians have a long tradition of photography, and that it's a different history to that of, for example, France,' Ghabaian Etehadieh told BJP. Photography in Iran really blossomed in the 1920-1960s then almost stopped, until the revolution - it was an important part of the revolution and beyond. Now is another big time for Iranian photographers, because they now have access to the internet, and can see images from elsewhere. The level of photography now is higher.'

The exhibition includes early shots of eroticised 'Persian femmes' by Antoine Sevnegin as well as striking shots of the chaos of the revolution, shot by photojournalists such as Bahman Jalagi and Kaveh Golestan, as well as contemporary work by photographers such as Sadegh Tirafken, Vahid Salerni and Arash Kamooshi. Tirafken's images mix composite headshots with traditional carpets to suggest the multitudes which comprise Iranian society, while Salerni provides a refreshing take on an often-photographed country by showing shots of football matches. Kamooshi, meanwhile, shows a funny, poignant and, finally, sinister scenario - the police confiscation of a set of domestic satellite images. 'One of the questions we ask in the exhibition is whether there is a school of Iranian photography,' said Ghabaian Etehadieh. 'I think maybe there isn't yet - but there will be later.'

The exhibition is on show until 22 November, which means it's also up when Paris Photo comes to town (19-22 November), with the same Iranian theme. Other institutions picking up the baton include Monnaie de Paris, with an exhibition of 30 years of documentary photography from the revolution to the present day (06 November – 20 December) and HSBC France, which has a short exhibition entitled Chroniques Iraniennes (Iranian stories,16-27 November). Paris Photo itself, meanwhile, will include an exhibition of Iranian and Arab photography curated by Catherine David including images by up-and-coming photographers presented by two Tehran galleries - Mohammed Ghazali and Sadegh Tirafkan (presented by Assart Art) and Bahman Jalali, Katayoun Karami and Gohar Dashti (presented by Silk Road - Ghabaian Etehadieh's gallery).

And there are rich pickings outside Paris too. Iran Unbowed, at The Churchill Hyatt Regency London, 10-24 October, will show work by established artists such as Abbas Kiarostami and Farideh Lashai as well as Hossein Cheraghchi and Rasool Soltani, who are previously unexibited outside of Iran. Photojournalist David Burnett’s images of the Iranian revolution, meanwhile, were recently exhibited at Visa Pour l’Image and have been published as a book by National Geographic.