On the first of May in 1896, the eve of his fiftieth anniversary of accession to the throne, Nasir al-Din Shah was assassinated by Mirza Reza Kermani, an impoverished merchant and follower of Jamal al-Din Afghani. The regicide’s imprisonment and his subsequent hanging in August of that year was the first execution that was extensively photographed in the Qajar era. Two photographers, the well-known Antoin Sevruguin and a Qajar court photographer, likely Abdullah Qajar, first portrayed the regicide during Kirmani’s imprisonment and then photographed his execution. Through an examination of how these two series of photographs varied in their focus, aesthetic principles, intentions, and usage, this paper considers the role photography played in the modernization reforms of the Qajar penal system and the development of executions as public spectacles. This paper will also shed light on the afterlife of these photographic depictions, which were circulated during the Constitutional Revolution. At the same time, the transcripts of Mira Reza Kermani’s interviews that were conducted during his imprisonment were published in progressive journals like Sur-e Israfil. In considering the continued reproduction and circulation of the textual and photographic depictions of this series of events, this study addresses important questions about how this material was utilized by varied political groups at key moments in Qajar history. What the multi-faceted and, oftentimes, contradictory usage of these photographs shows is that different agents could deploy the same images for divergent sets of purposes, imbuing them with a sense of ambiguity, one that is certainly inherent to the nature of the photographic medium. By exploring these well-known, yet rarely analyzed, images this paper not only sheds light on an overlooked chapter of Middle Eastern photography, but also illuminates the centrality of this medium to key developments in the broader history of Iranian modernity.