In Iran, the introduction of photography as developed in Europe rapidly led to the emergence of an independent photographic culture. Jonas Wenger uses the visual motif ‘labour’ to investigate the extent to which local photographers updated existing Orientalist stereotypes when they appropriated the technology. He also examines what rhetorical functions specific visual conventions have had for Iran’s internal discourse on internal expansionism, modernity, nationalism and independence. Over a period of seventy years, he reveals how European imperialist claims have intersected with Iranian efforts at nationalization in photographic representations of labour, and shows that European images of Iran overlap with inner Iranian tensions between centre and periphery.