About my work

For me, photography is like a session of psychoanalysis. There are things in us humans that cannot be described by words but only by images. The fluidity of identity and self-perception, a flicker of feeling when we look at a bright light, the stream of body movement, the effect we have on our space and the effect space has on us. To me, these are not things to be described or written about, but to be photographed.

It was September 2021 when I first came to the UK from Iran to study, and since then I’ve felt a strong sense of isolation, of being out of place. I’ve felt increasingly lonely, moving from one small room to another in a short amount of time. I had to leave friends and family behind, live in university accommodations and rented rooms. I moved from city to city, place to place. I needed a medium to express all the suppressed feelings, all the hidden emotions and scars. I picked up the camera and photographed—to express, to think, and to feel that I matter.

Through my photography, I create psychological landscapes, where a feeling, thought, mental fantasy, or unconscious desire takes centre stage. I draw a lot on the Freudian concept of the Id, Ego, and Superego as a reference for my long-shutter photographs, where the split in identity is essential. I also draw from the Lacanian notion of the mirror stage, in how the subject who is photographed might perceive themselves after seeing their own image. I am also interested in speculative and fantasy settings, when various emotions and mental states are explored in a fictional space.

My work has a staged and performative element to it. The subject—whether myself or someone else—should act out their inner feelings and emotions in tune with my camera, within a scene designed to portray the reality of their inner state.