Iran : Blank Pages of an Iranian Family Album

Born in 1981 in Tehran, this self-taught photographer has covered regional conflicts, natural disasters and social unrest for major international publications.

Having decided “to continue the family album of [her] generation”, she followed nine “ordinary” men and women, whom she photographed and filmed in natural settings of the Iranian capital and its suburbs. Newsha Tavakolian also collected the musings of these middle-class youth, caught between safeguarding their privacy and blocking public online space, dreams of the future and the burdens of the past, open culture and the restrictions of fanaticism. Altogether, these pictures form a delicate, melancholic portrait gallery.

"The family photo album is the showcase for my generation. The yellowed albums and the pictures of smiling children dressed up in their best clothes are testament to our hopes and dreams, but they end in blank pages, and the moment when our parents stopped taking our pictures […]

For me Iran is the country where I was born. I went to school here, started my career, and never left. As a photographer I have always struggled with how to perceive my society, with all its complexities and misunderstandings. For this project, I have decided to continue producing the photo albums of my generation. To add the pictures that were never taken of the way that life is for them now, as adults. I followed nine people who in a sense define this generation. They are interchangeable, thus representative of many people. This photo album is theirs; it is my vision of life in Iran now, unromantic and confined. Those who feature on the pages are interchangeable, placed randomly in the natural situation of what is or could be their daily lives.

I began by collecting some childhood snapshots from their own family albums. After that, I took a series of pictures that show their lives today, like reportage. They are not necessarily present in these images, but the pictures illustrate the way they live in the four corners of the megalopolis that is Tehran.

I have brought them to a mountain overlooking Tehran, Iran’s capital […] In this disarray I have asked them to find their own space, even though it may not be much bigger than their own two feet. Contrary to all the other images, these nine portraits are staged.

Now, what matters to me is that this work communicates the feelings some have here in Iran. These images will not change anything, nor will they help anybody. What I hope is that they represent a generation marginalized by those speaking in their name."