The Iranian Living Room

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Iranian Living Room
If you leaf through our family album
the first ten years of my life
were spent in black and white
and predominantly in our living room
yet my memories of those years
are full of colour.
Hamid Ziarati, Iranian writer
Iranian Living Room?is the first of a series of editorial projects self-published by Fabrica.

 

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from right Yasmin using her laptop to check Facebook and smoking, Negar is drunk and smoking too.
from right Yasmin using her laptop to check Facebook and smoking, Negar is drunk and smoking too.

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Under the creative direction of Enrico Bossan, head of photography at Fabrica, 15 young Iranian photographers welcome us into the “Iranian living room”, a unique space beyond global media and local state. This is where life is lived in private in Iran; it is often where life takes place, in fact.
In this living room both literal and metaphorical, we are privileged to discover multiple interpretations of Iranian reality: cultural differences and similarities, solitude and conviviality, relaxation and excitement, dressing up for an interior life versus dressing up for the street, the rhythms of religious ceremony and the patterns of everyday life.
Where much life on the street is presented by the world’s media as foreign and inhibited, behind these closed doors the lens captures a life that is immediately recognisable in all its untrammelled richness. It takes on a central role as a kind of counterpoint to the contested street, functioning as a new public sphere. It is both far away and close to home. These vignettes are framed by young photographers who, through their own storytelling, might help change the stories we tell about Iran.
Photography coordination:
Farhad Babaei
Photographers:
Mohammad Mahdi Amya
Majid Farahani
Saina Golzar
Sanaz Hajikhani
Hamed Ilkhan
Ali Kaveh
Mahshid Mahboubifar
Mehdi Moradpour
Sahar Pishsaraeian
Negar Sadehvandi
Hashem Shakeri
Sina Shiri
Morteza Soorani
Nazanin Tabatabaei Yazdi
Ali Tajik
Introduction by:
Hamid Ziarati
Publisher: Fabrica
Pages: 316
Format: 20x26cm
Language: English-Italian
ISBN 978-88-908346-5-3
? FABRICA 2013
fabrica.it

Author: Shahidul Alam

Time Magazine Person of the Year 2018. A photographer, writer, curator and activist, Shahidul Alam obtained a PhD in chemistry before switching to photography. His seminal work “The Struggle for Democracy” contributed to the removal of General Ershad. Former president of the Bangladesh Photographic Society, Alam set up the Drik agency, Chobi Mela festival and Pathshala, South Asian Media Institute, considered one of the finest schools of photography in the world. Shown in MOMA New York, Centre Georges Pompidou, Royal Albert Hall and Tate Modern, Alam has been guest curator of Whitechapel Gallery, Winterthur Gallery and Musee de Quai Branly. His awards include Mother Jones, Shilpakala Award and Lifetime Achievement Award at the Dali International Festival of Photography. Speaker at Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, Oxford and Cambridge universities, TEDx, POPTech and National Geographic, Alam chaired the international jury of the prestigious World Press Photo contest. Honorary Fellow of Royal Photographic Society, Alam is visiting professor of Sunderland University in UK and advisory board member of National Geographic Society. John Morris, the former picture editor of Life Magazine describes his book “My journey as a witness”, (listed in “Best Photo Books of 2011” by American Photo), as “The most important book ever written by a photographer.”

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