Motherland

2024 - present

This photography project explores discrimination against women in Iran, focusing on the experiences of my mother, who grew up in a wealthy family. The discrimination within her family and her lack of access to her paternal inheritance serve as the main motivation for this project.

The aim of this project is to reveal the impact of discrimination on women and to highlight overlooked realities that shape their lives. It will also examine the relationship between these forms of discrimination and the concept of ecofeminism.

The project consists of a photo installation made from photographs of lands that legally belong to my mother but from which she has been deprived. Alongside the images, recordings of my mother’s voice and the carpets she has woven will be presented as symbols of her identity and memories.

This project not only reflects my mother’s personal experience but also points to the systemic discrimination faced by women in Iranian society. By combining art and lived reality, I hope to draw greater attention to these issues.

Khāk / Ab    آب خاک

2022 - present

emerges from my experience of living between two cities shaped by water in very different ways: Isfahan, where water has become scarce and uncertain, and Istanbul, where it is continuously present.

I come from Isfahan, a historic city once shaped around the Zayande-Roud—a river that carried not only water, but agriculture, movement, and life. Its presence helped define the city’s rhythms, its gatherings, and its sense of place. Today, the river is often dry. What remains is a landscape marked by absence, where water is no longer guaranteed but awaited. People gather along its empty bed, hoping for its return. The river has become more than a resource—it is tied to memory, identity, and a growing sense of political and environmental concern, shaped in part by long-term mismanagement and decisions made without care for its future.

Melancholy

2022 - 2024

This series was photographed in wild natural landscapes—places where the scale and presence of nature dissolve one’s sense of orientation. In those moments, standing before the vastness and silence of the scene, a quiet melancholic feeling emerges. It is not sadness, but a deep awareness of one’s smallness within the grandeur of the natural world.

These images stand in contrast to the controlled and designed forms of urban nature. While gardens impose order and structure upon the landscape, the wilderness evokes a more mysterious and emotional encounter—where nature remains indifferent, immense, and impossible to fully grasp.

Dissection

2021


The contradiction of gardens The carefully designed gardens are very different from the wildness of the forest. This made me wonder: why do we shape nature with our own patterns when it already follows its own rules? What remains of its natural state when we bring it into cities? Are gardens a middle ground between wild nature and human creations, or is there a deep divide between the two, each trying to control the other? The orderly design of gardens reminds me of the balance of the past, while forests reflect a more untamed, mysterious spirit. Nature, after all, never rushes.

A prologue

2017 - 2020


Prologue takes shape at the intersection of my day job and my artistic practice, alongside an ongoing passionate engagement with photography as a medium.

The project focuses on the means of photography—studio tools, lighting equipment, and materials that usually remain invisible, existing only in service of producing an image. Here, they become the subject themselves. While working as an industrial photographer, I often found myself struggling within the practicality of the medium. During working hours, the camera was not a space for daydreaming or experimentation, but an image-making machine—its role was to produce precise, polished representations of commercial goods.

The studio I worked in was small, at times almost claustrophobic. There was a constant sense of pressure and repetition, yet alongside it, a persistent need to hold onto my position as an artist. Prologue emerges from this tension—between duty and desire, between producing images and searching for something within them.

Over time, my attention shifted. I became increasingly absorbed in the act of seeing—in light, texture, and the smallest details of the photographic setup. The process of lighting, adjusting, and observing began to matter more than the final image itself. In many moments, what existed before the image—the setup, the anticipation, the in-between—felt more compelling than the outcome.

I began to stay with these moments, using them as a way to engage more directly with photography, slowing down the movement toward completion. Prologue reflects this shift. It marks a movement in my practice—from outcome to process, and from function to attention.

2018

This photo series emerged from a simple but unresolved need: to find a place within the city of Tehran to pause after a long and exhausting day.

The project developed through my nighttime wanderings in Tehran, where I searched for spaces that might allow for stillness; places to sit, to step back, and to distance myself from the intensity of the city. This search, however, was often met with resistance. The city can feel tense and unwelcoming, especially in relation to my experience as a woman. Spaces that are meant for rest—parks, green areas, open grounds—do not easily offer a sense of safety or ease, particularly for women.

Most of the images are taken in the early hours of the night, using flash. The flash isolates fragments of space, pulling them out of their surroundings and shaping temporary scenes that appear quiet, empty, and accessible. In the images, these places seem calm and unoccupied. But this condition exists only within the frame. In lived experience, these same spaces remain charged, unstable, and difficult to inhabit.

The act of photographing further complicates this relationship. The camera and flash make the images possible, but they also draw attention, shaping where I can go, how long I can stay, and how visible I become.

Abreast moves within this tension, between visibility and withdrawal, between constructed stillness and lived unease. It reflects on how access to public space is not neutral, but shaped by gender, perception, and the dynamics of attention, asking who is able to pause, to remain, or to exist unnoticed within the city.

Yellows have not gone red in vain

2015


This series began during my night wanderings through the deserted, barren parts of various cities in Iran. Captured with my cellphone, it allowed me to experiment with the flash in unique ways. A professional camera wouldn’t have offered the same flexibility to manipulate light. By placing my fingers over the flash, I controlled the light, and the color tones in the photos reflect my own blood.

Marzie Rashidi

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