Ben Curtis: Bakhtiari Wedding

Photograph © Ben Curtis/AP-All Rights Reserved
Ben Curtis of SnapperTalk blog, brings us his work on a Bakhtiari Wedding while traveling in Iran. The audio was captured using a Zoom H2. Listening to the soundtrack, you'll hear the women's ululations, an ancient and traditional form of celebratory expressions in the Middle East and beyond.

The Bakhtiaris, who are Shi'a Muslims and speak a Persian dialect known as Luri, are one of two main nomadic groups in Iran, along with the ethnic Turkic Qashqai group. Iran has one of the largest nomadic populations in the world, an estimated 1.5 million in a country of some 70 million, according to the government's agency for nomad affairs.

Ben Curtis is currently based in Cairo, Egypt where he is Middle East Photographer & Photo Editor for the Associated Press.

Here's Ben Curtis' Bakhtiari Wedding