The twenty-three women photographers featured in Anahita Ghabaian Etehadieh’s Breathing Space: Iranian Women Photographers shed light on the state of contemporary photography from Iran. Etehadieh is the founder of Silk Road Gallery, Iran’s first gallery devoted exclusively to photography. Many of the photographers featured in this book have previously exhibited their works at her gallery in Tehran.
The book spans three generations of women beginning with Hengameh Golestan and Rana Javadi who photographed the Iranian revolution in 1979. Golestan’s photography bears witness to the crowds of women of all ages and social classes marching through Tehran to protest the compulsory wearing of the hijab. She recorded the major demonstrations of 8 March 1979, which coincided with International Women’s Day.
The book’s UK release comes after widespread protests in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who had been detained for allegedly violating the country’s dress code in September 2022. Subsequent arrests and executions of many young people across the country led to months of unrest which have since subsided.
Photographers from the generations that followed the Revolution, such as Shadi Ghadirian and Gohar Dashti, created staged scenes in their works to evoke memories of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), which they lived through as children. Younger photographers who feature in the book such as Maryam Takhtkeshian and Ghazaleh Rezaei, chose to tackle the subject in a more direct manner. This generation also explores subjects such as intimacy and the body that had previously been considered off-limits. The environment is also an important subject matter for them, with photography being used to record the catastrophic effects of climate change.
In her Introduction, Etehadieh writes:
Despite the lack of institutions to promote it, Iranian photography has increasingly begun to travel beyond the nation’s borders and is starting to follow the path already taken by Iranian cinema: buzz is spreading in the West, works have entered the collections of major international institutions, and there is growing interest from collectors. Iranian women photographers invite us to dive deeper into this little-known society, where photography is a vital space for self-expression.
Through the efforts of private curators and collectors, Iranian photography has begun to make its mark on the public through international exhibitions and prestigious photo fairs. They are now being noticed by international institutions: Hengameh Golestan, Newsha Tavakolian and Shadi Ghadirian, who all appear in the new book, are in the collections of the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, the V&A Museum in London and Los Angeles’s LACMA.
Breathing Space is an important work, featuring high-quality photographs that documents Iran through the lens of female photographers who capture the country and its people through decades of war, sanctions, regime change and climate change. Breathing Space also examines contemporary society in Iran as it looks to the future, while in many ways rooted in the past.
Other photographers featured are: Nazli Abbaspour; Hoda Afshar; Atoosa Alebouyeh; Hoda Amin; Mina Boromand; Solmaz Daryani; Gohar Dashti; Maryam Firuzi; Ghazaleh Hedayat; Rana Javadi; Mahboube Karamli; Gelareh Kiazand; Yalda Moaiery; Sahar Mokhtari; Tahmineh Monzavi; Pargol E. Naloo; Malekeh Nayiny; and Mahshid Noshirvani.