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.

"These photos will not change anything and will not help anyone. What I want is to represent a generation marginalised by those who speak for it.”

Iran remains one of the largest prisons in the region for journalists — particularly women journalists. Since 2022, nearly 180 journalists who covered the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran have been detained, interrogated, and imprisoned. Those who continue to work do so in dangerous conditions, facing censorship, surveillance, threats, and the constant risk of arrest.

Reporters Without Borders

It’s 12:00 p.m. and Somayeh is teaching an English class at an all-girls school in southern Tehran.

“I was raised in a small town near Isfahan, where everything was associated with religion. In a town where everybody knows each other, you lack individuality. For me the sky was out of reach. I married a relative, with whom I moved to Tehran. After a few years, we grew apart and could not remain married. But it took me seven years to get his permission for the divorce. Now I have a life of my own; like a dancer on a tightrope, I walk through this metropolis, ready to fall at each misstep. But I am grateful that I now at least have the individuality and freedom I once lacked. I have patience.”