Soleiman Minasian

Soghomon Minasian, known in Persian as Soleiman and in English as Solomon Minassian, was born in 1931 in Rasht, in Gilan province in northern Iran, into an Armenian Iranian family. He was the elder brother of Hrand Minasian, who also became a filmmaker. He did not study film formally; he learned cinematography by practice, under the guidance of Ebrahim Golestan at the Golestan Film Studio in Tehran.

Minasian began working in 1958 as an assistant cameraman and then cameraman on short documentaries and advertising films. At the Golestan Film Studio his first experience was as assistant cameraman on Golestan's Wave, Coral and Rock. He went on to photograph many of the studio's documentaries, among them Kharabad (1961), The Courtship (1962), The Hills of Marlik (1963), and Harvest and Seed and The Jewels Treasury (both 1965).

He was the cinematographer of Forugh Farrokhzad's The House Is Black (1962), a short documentary about a leper colony near Tabriz that won the prize for best documentary at the Oberhausen festival in 1963 and is now counted among the most important Iranian films. He was also director of photography on Ebrahim Golestan's feature Brick and Mirror (1965), and later shot Arby Ovanessian's documentary on the Armenian monastery of Qara Kelisa.

After leaving Golestan, he and his brother Hrand founded their own advertising film company, Chaplin Film. In 1970 the brothers co-produced and co-directed their first feature, Dawn (Tolu), which Soleiman also wrote and shot, followed by Cry (Faryad) in 1971. His camera work on Dawn won a gold plaque at the first Iranian film festival and the prize for best colour cinematography at the third Sepas festival in 1971.

He emigrated to England in 1980 and worked freelance. He returned to Iran in 1988 hoping to make advertising films again but could not establish himself, and went back to London in 1993. In London he also worked as a portrait painter.

Minasian lived in London from 1993 until his death. He had a daughter, Nella Minasian. Some years before his death he suffered a stroke that left him with limited mobility. In 2006 Parviz Jahed made a documentary about his life and work, and in October 2010 the Omid cultural centre in west London held an evening in his honour, titled From Camera to Canvas, which screened The House Is Black and showed his paintings.

Soleiman Minasian died in London on 27 October 2026 (5 Aban 1405 in the Iranian calendar), aged 95. The film critic and researcher Parviz Jahed announced his death on social media after being told by Minasian's daughter, Nella. The news was carried on 28 October by the Iranian Book News Agency (IBNA), the Tehran Armenian daily Alik and the Persian film site Paraj. The cause of death and funeral arrangements were not made public.

Minasian's images for The House Is Black and Brick and Mirror are central to the history of Iranian cinema, and both films are still screened and studied internationally. As one of the cameramen trained at the Golestan studio, he helped shape the documentary style that fed into the Iranian New Wave. Parviz Jahed called him a naturally gifted artist whose work made an important contribution to Iranian documentary and feature film.