Noushin Shafiei – Funfair

This is not my first series that concern Tehran, as my previous collection, “Daj”, was also dedicated to this subject. However, in the former, the city worked more as a background, as if it was a stage for objects and structures that were coming out from the twilight through the call of the flashlight. But gradually I abandoned this embellished and prettified image of the city for a more concrete and tangible one in which neither space is that much dramatic nor are the objects so symbolic. The works of Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand and William Eggleston found a new meaning this time and a new aspect of photography attracted me; i.e., how we can stay faithful to the banality of everydayness and yet be able to show the intense urban life within it?

Without knowing exactly what to do, I just kept taking photos: I used flash again, but this time looking for a shallower, barer image rather than the deep, dramatic one; not being bounded to twilight hours, I had more time to take photos, and I tried to avoid centered and symmetrical compositions. I do not know whether I was successful or not, but looking at these photos it seems to me that those vast previous spaces that set the scene for the objects have now become enclosures; polished, bright surfaces are replaced with the objects and that dramatic atmosphere gave way to an ironic view, to a play.