Shadowlands

Shadowlands was shot over six visits to Tehran between 1996 and 2011. I spent several months roaming the city taking photographs and took a lot of time discussing the project with Iranian artists and cultural practitioners to devise an appropriate aesthetic strategy. I was one of only a handful of Westerners in Iran and one of the only people in the country taking photographs in a public arena. When the project was completed, I worked closely with curators and publishers to explore creative possibilities for exhibition and publication. For exhibition, I produced a series of large-scale C-type prints and a separate audio-visual installation piece. In this project I aim to contribute to debates about contemporary documentary photography and art practice, and in particular, new directions in street photography. This research pursues issues that are part of my continuing interest in a personal, lyrical form of documentary practice; one that deliberately blurs the distinction between fact and fiction. I intend the narrative structures in this work to move it towards the cinematic. The work represents a rare insight into contemporary life in Iran and represents a radical departure from dominant representations of Iran in the West