Landscape Revolution People

My photography explores how departure, absence and loss impact one’s understanding of home and identity, via portrait and landscape photography. My work addresses how struggle affects people’s sense of self and place, through the properties of photography as a medium, as well as trends in portrait photography as a genre. Drawing from the history of portrait photography and the aesthetic conventions of realist paintings of the 19th century.

The portraits are taken in the intimate setting of the participants’ homes, with minimal intervention, and shot with existing (natural) light. The longer exposure process of large format photography and the use of a tripod hinder quick snap-shots and allow participants to pose for the camera. As they pose, the participants can choose to look the camera square in the eye and meet, confront/return, or reject the photographers’ and viewers’ gazes. Exploring the possibilities of agency inherent in posing and its contingency on the relationship between photographer and subject. Implementing various approaches that include collaborating with participants to determine the pose, location, and even the moment in time the shutter is pressed. The question of agency becomes particularly relevant for the subjects who, under cultural and religions strain, now find themselves with a partner in a paternalistic society.

As an ex-patriated Iranian male, the questions of how identity is in relation to the people and places I photograph, how it affects them, and how this in turn informs the process and content of my work. My method hinges on a conscious and sensitive approach to cultural differences, while remaining aware of the fact that although I have ties to Iran, given my academic formation in the West, I cannot fully escape the binary power structure inherent in the Western gaze. The desire to explore how portrait photography can potentially create a space where ‘marginalised’ subjects can assert, (re)fashion, and perform a sense of self, become a source of my visual narrative.