This paper explores the genre of popular photography in Iran in one of its current, online manifestations: photo - blogs (photography - based blog sites of ‘amateur’ photographers). It demonstrates how photo - blogs, as digital - visual diaries, constitute discursive sites of aesthetic play for Iranian popular photographers, serving as extensions of the private self and public sphere. Photo - blogs exhibit vernacular, ‘bottom - up’ photographs depicting ‘life as lived’ in Iran, which speak to an embattled visual legacy of twentieth - century representations of the country. At the same time, viewers from across the world uphold the social life and life - span of photo - blogs in diverse ways - as points of diasporic connection, alternative news sources and simulated forms of virtual tourism. They engage in a shared ‘experiencing’ of Iran through imaginative, sensorial and phenomenological social praxes. An enchantment with digital technologies can be said to explain much of the way the Internet, when combined with the democratic lenses of digital cameras and camera phones and a strong socio - cultural imperative, acquires a particular status as purveyor of ‘truth’ and ‘justice’. For producers and viewers of photo - blogs, this reflects a perceived ability of the camera to render visible to the world previously ‘invisible’ aspects of Iranian social and cultural life. Moving beyond an analytical preoccupation with photographic realism, or the truthfulness or falsity of the digital image, the paper explores the nature of its social life, including the production, consumption and circulation, which constitute its agency and utility as a cultural artefact and object of enchantment. It weaves together theoretical aspects in digital and visual anthropology, including material culture, art and aesthetics and applies established principles in photographic theory to the digital context of Iranian online social networks. Drawing on long - term ethnographic research undertaken in Iran and online within the Iranian ‘photo - blogosphere’, and with reference to specific case studied photo - blogs, photo - bloggers and images, the paper critically reflects upon this photography - specific facet of the Iranian blogosphere hitherto unconsidered in scholarly literature on Iranian blogs. The paper concludes by suggesting that photo - blogs constitute a salient form of Iranian techno - aesthetic agency, which belongs to a broader on - going transnational project of negotiating the image of Iran in a digital age, between contested ‘local’ and ‘global’ imaginaries.