Mohammadreza Mirzaei is a polymorphic photographer. He photographs in an abstraction that echoes, paradoxically, his appropriation of his increasingly intimate personal geography. He is also an educator, a publisher and a curator. A few years ago, he began publishing a monthly web magazine called Dide (Farsi for “gaze”) which showcased contemporary Iranian photography. Considering the local photography market, many of the artists who appear on the site are no longer working today; documentary and art photographers may struggle in the West, but the situation is far worse in Iran. The publication was halted, but Dide nevertheless provides an interesting introduction to photography in Iran, which is still largely neglected. Readers must now rely on the online magazine Tavoos to follow Iran contemporary art scene.
What cannot be seen in either of these magazines though is the recent photographs of Mohammadreza Mirzaei, which he has been working on since he came back from the United States in Summer 2014. “After returning to my homeland, it seems nothing is as it was before,” he says. “Or maybe it is just me, and everything is the same. These photos are kind of celebrating the absurd beauty or ugliness I have found here.”
Of particular interest in this series is the way in which intimacy and deep knowledge of an environment leads towards a radicalization of vision. While Mirzaei’s previous series took an allegorical approach to reality, they were still part of a relatively figurative process of representation.
“There has always been a challenge between ‘something’ and ‘nothing’ or the abstraction and realism in my photos,” he says. In this series, the tension between these two simultaneous realities is even more palpable. The subject is sometimes observed from so close, or in such a light, that it transforms and erases the idea of scale and dimension, as when when we see a familiar object through a microscope.
http://www.mrmirzaei.com
http://www.didemag.com
http://www.tavoosonline.com
https://www.design.upenn.edu/fine-arts/graduate/post/here-comes-sun
