MAHOOR BAROZANDEH

street photography
documentary photography
personal projects

Screenshot_20211123_204221_com.google.android_edited.jpg

ABOUT

My need to photograph came to me during a trip to Iran, where I was on an academic exchange to study the geopolitics of the Middle East. I suddenly understood how taking pictures could help me understand what I was living and seeing. It was there that I developed my taste for street and documentary photography, as well as the main themes of my work: ways of resisting, daily life, civil societies and the place of women in different societies. For me, taking pictures is dwelling into the depths of humankind.

I also carry out more personal projects, where I question the relationship to the body, to memory, to travel, and where I experiment by mixing photography with other art forms such as painting.

I'm currently working on two projects: the first is a documentary on Turkish human rights associations. The second is a project focusing on the link between women's bodies and nature, an idea drawn from the eco-feminist school of thought.

PLACES OF IRAN : travels, women, youth and modernity

In 2020, I went to Iran on an academic exchange to study Persian and middle eastern geopolitics. I discovered a country riddled with profound paradoxes: a youth in crisis, powerful women and a fragmented society. An Iranian life is one in which each of us takes on a multiplicity of social identities that are often at odds with our own values; it's a life of daily resistance; it's continuing to love a magnificent country where life is not always easy. It means trying to live one's life despite the many restrictions and dangers.

I wanted to show outside this closed and little-known country what Iran really was, far from what the medias show. For 10 months, I was able to immerse myself in Iranian society, to live it, to understand it from the inside, and to rub shoulders with a multiplicity of individuals.

I wanted to focus my photos on women, religion, youth and daily life. I think these themes are intrinsically linked. I want to reveal a country where people can be free, where religious practices are multiple and diverse, where women resist every day, and where culture is a richness shared by all. I wanted to reveal a country beyond its usual clichés.