Elaheh Abdolahabadi
Iran
ARTIST BIO
Elaheh Abdolahabadi is an Iranian photographer, visual artist, and educator whose work explores the relationships between people, urban life, memory, and place. Her practice combines photographing people in social and urban environments, examining landscapes and architecture as sites of memory, and working with photographic archives. Each project is guided by its own conceptual framework, allowing form, medium, and material to follow the idea rather than imposing a fixed visual style.
Her work has been shown in international exhibitions across the United States, Japan, France, Switzerland, the UAE, Mexico, Lebanon, Bangladesh, and Turkey; including venues such as Arizona State University, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, Sharjah Art Foundation, Institute Français in Beirut; Alliance Française Dubai, and the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico. She has received recognition including the Bronze Medal in the Street Portrait category of the Paris International Street Photo Awards. In Iran, she has held several solo and group exhibitions, and her photographs and writings have been published in books, catalogs, journals, and international publications.
Since 2012, she has been teaching photography at several universities in Iran and is currently a faculty member at the University of Neyshabur. In parallel with her artistic practice, she is active as a lecturer, researcher, and speaker.
PROJECT STATEMENT
Another Place
“After long years of distance, it has been a while since I returned to my hometown and live here. While I'm walking in the city these days, everything seems extremely familiar and extremely strange at the same time. I don't have any sense of belonging to it. Right in the middle of my hometown, a place which should be the closest one to me, I'm a stranger who occasionally loses track of time and place.
It is as if I'm standing in the middle of the dark, hunting for a light which enlightens my path; however, I don't see any light. All I can do is shine a light on the body of this city with my camera flash. Maybe with the help of these lights, I can accept the city as my hometown again. These photos are the narration of my conflict to accept this place as my hometown. It's an ongoing project.” – Elaheh Abdolahabadi
