Tehran Bureau: A lizard-headed strongman and a nineteenth-century noblewoman pose together on a chaise lounge. Outstretched before a crowd of Qajar dignitaries lies a nude woman. A monstrous birdman clutches a bunch of bloodied and shrivelled heads, which dangle from his fist like a cluster of screaming mandrakes.

Such are the surreal and provocative scenes in the sepia-hued Polaroids by Iranian photographer Kaveh Golestan, who entitled these collages Az Div o Dad (Of Beast and Wild, quoted from the classical Persian poetry of Rumi). Golestan – a figure who lived and died by his photojournalism, killed in 2003 while documenting the Iraq war for the BBC - created this innovative series in 1976 by moving collaged fragments in front of an open shutter under long exposure. The images are experimental visions of modern and later Qajar-era (c.1844-1925) photography spliced with the tails and heads of wild animals and the curved flesh of nude figures >>>