Documentary photography has always been a popular genre and projecting the inside of rarely visited and exotic places has been one of the most intriguing subjects among all documentary projects since the emergence of photography.
In recent years, conflicts in Middle East have inspired dozens of local and international photographers to focus on this area and a good many photo essays have been conducted to reveal the everyday life of people in the region’s countries.
As a photographer who was born and raised in this part of the world, I was always wondering if these so-called revealing projects could reflect the reality. In case of my country Iran, which is one of the most under shadowed countries, the inner Iran images were, most of the time, portraying people either as fanatic religious individuals or modernised men and women who are doing drugs and dance in underground parties.
Such images were always accompanied by superficial sentences like: “A young man sits in a car next to his mother in Tehran, where the use of headsets and mobile phones is widespread”.(from the photo essay “See Iran Coming Out of the Shadows” by Newsha Tavakolian for Time.com)
In my series of self-portraits, I tried to borrow such sentences and present them with my photos.
A dog is sleeping on the floor while his owner is sleeping on the bed. Beds are used by people in Iran. Tehran, Iran 2016 A 26 Years old Iranian boy is brushing his teeth in his apartment’s bathroom. Tehran, Iran 2016 An Iranian boy is drinking his morning tea out of a red mug. Mugs are popular for drinking tea and coffee in Iran. Tehran, Iran 2016 A boy in his twenties deciding on the brand of paper towel he is going to buy. Many manufacturers manufacture paper towels in Iran, a third world country. Tehran, Iran 2016 A young boy in a light color jacket is vacuuming the living room. Vacuum cleaners are widely used in Iran. Tehran, Iran 2016 A guy talking to his overweight friend while sitting on a sofa next to a bag of chips. Tehran, Iran 2016 A young man holds a book with orange cover. Tehran, Iran 2016 Two boys standing in front of each other with a ball in between. The one on the right has a red jersey and the other is wearing a white one. Tehran, Iran 2016 A young Iranian man thinking about something while wearing a blue T-shirt in his car. Tehran, Iran 2016 A young man takes out the garbage. Families generate waste on daily basis in Iran. Tehran, Iran 2016 A boy lying on a couch in a dark room. It is very common among Iranians to turn off the lights at nights and surf the net before sleeping. Tehran, Iran 2016
