NEWSHA TAVAKOLIAN – SAATCHI GALLERY – LONDON – CARMIGNAC PHOTOJOURNALISM AWARD
La note de Plac'ART: ►►►►
The Saatchi Gallery welcomes the work of Newsha Tavakolian, well-established photojournalist from Iran, and winner of the Carmignac Prize for
After a beautiful presentation of her work at La Chapelle des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the Saatchi show takes a different dimension in the large, very white room of the Saatchi. And it works. The quality of the photographs comes out more, in contrast to the intimacy that was brought to the show in Paris.
Blank Pages of an Iranian Photo Album is built with several chapters, all depicting the “common” Iranian people. The book itself is brilliantly conceived—building on the memory of the artist herself, who missed having a photo album and visual memories of her childhood. The chapters are named after the people photographs and, with a few images, dive into their lives, with a simplicity that captures and encapsulate the tensions of their daily life.
The strength of the work comes from its exhaustivity and its ability to draw a complete synopsis of Iranian society today—à la Robert Frank of The Americans. Tavakolian achieves this without bias and without taking her own stances, without the too-expected description of a repressed society, without bringing out any clichés about Iran, well to the contrary.
