URBAN IRAN is yet another fine book on design and graphic art from Mark Batty Publishers. Some casual readers might view this well designed and edited survey of art as yet another aspect of the plentiful books on graffiti art, but for the reader who takes time to not only enjoy the richly colorful pages so generously offered here but to also read the fine essays, there is much to learn, appreciate and understand about Iran as a country cramped by years of censorship. The effects of harsh laws against self-expression are bound to be most obvious in the street graffiti, that universal sounding board for resentment and anger and fatigue over the establishment.

Abdoh was born in Iran and spent two years of his early childhood in England. When Salar Abdoh was fourteen his family was forced to flee Iran and arrived in the U.S. His father died shortly after the family’s arrival in the States, leaving his children homeless in Los Angeles. After traveling the country, Abdoh eventually earned an undergraduate degree from U.C. Berkeley and received a Master’s from City College.