Maryam Saeedpoor
Maryam Saeedpoor is an Iranian photographer. Her latest series of theatrically staged portraits explores the suffering and melancholy of women in Iranian society, following the historic protests over the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini in 2022. This interview was translated by Maryam’s nephew Alireza Khaki.
HM: Did you have a cultural upbringing in Iran and how did your family encourage you to view the world?
MS: There was always pressure both from my family and also from society. I had a very strict, religious and traditional family and I had to fight hard for my family to accept me for what I am today. I suffered a great deal of hardship growing up.
HM: How did you come to photography originally?
MS: As a child I loved stories and I was always emotional and drowning in my feelings. I would draw and paint the stories that I had in my mind. I found photography later in life and it gave me a new tool to tell stories more easily. I trained as a photojournalist initially and became a press photographer. This really helped me to improve my social skills and to have a better connection with people in general. Eventually I started to work with art photography in parallel to my press career. Today, the journalistic spirit is always present in my work as it helps me uncover the stories of the people I photograph.
HM: Is there anyone that has had a significant influence on your career?
MS: In the last four years Majid Saeedi, an Iranian photojournalist, has been the person that I have talked most to about my projects and my work. He is a war photographer that has worked across many regions including Afghanistan and Iraq.
HM: Can you talk about how ambiguous many of your earlier works are?
MS: I love using ambiguity in my work. It helps people use their own imagination, to daydream and to create their own stories when looking at my photographs. It is also a product of living in Iran. I have to walk a fine line when publishing my works and I keep a censor inside of myself at all times as I never know what may cause the government to put pressure on me. Perhaps if I had been born into a different society my work would be much less ambiguous.
HM: What was your artistic process when creating your latest body of work?
MS: This series was fueled by the anger and the fury that I felt in response to what was happening in our society during the Mahsa revolution. The Mahsa revolution was a really special thing in our society. It has affected and changed all of us and made huge waves through our society that I was responding to. Iranian women are fighting for their freedom. If women in Iran do not obey the government and the hijab laws, they are removed from society. Society and women have always been key themes in my work so this movement for women’s freedom has very naturally become the major influence in my most recent series.
HM: Where do you find your sitters, are they friends or strangers?
MS: I usually find them in cafes, in the streets or in galleries. When they are invited to see my other works they usually accept the invitation to be photographed very warmly. I also send out notifications on Instagram where I asked individuals to send photographs of themselves and then invite them into the studio. I usually have an instinct as to how I want to photograph them before they sit for me. I have the final images mostly planned in my mind first before they arrive in the studio.
HM: Could you choose one or two photographs from the series to discuss in more detail?
MS: I wanted to show a contradiction between modernity and tradition. I have one photograph of a woman wearing a hijab that is typically used for devout prayers but she is also confrontationally looking at the camera and smoking. In another photograph I have a very young woman, approximately 17 years old, so still a child, who is wearing a teapot on her head. Making tea for your family is a symbol of the traditional housewife in Iran.
HM: Your work is deeply rooted in visual activism. Do you have any confidence in photography having any power for change?
MS: I don’t see myself as an activist and I don’t see photography as a tool for change or believe that art can change society, but I do believe that art itself is change. The root of all art is in our minds and art is always one step ahead of us, it helps us process our emotions and what is happening in society. It can act as a bridge between ourselves and society at large.
HM: What is your next goal for your career?
MS: I don’t see any future for myself and my photographs in Iran. I hope one day I can exhibit outside of Iran. I have had two exhibitions in Iran and both were closed after a few days. It is emotionally very hard to bounce back from that and start again with the fear that my future exhibitions may also be closed.
HM: Do you ever take your camera out onto the streets in Tehran and if so, how do you navigate that?
MS: Some people are photographing on the streets now but I prefer to be in my studio where I can focus in safety.
HM: What is your process around picture editing and how do you work with Picture Editors?
MS: We don’t have such a thing as Picture Editors here in Iran. I do all the editing myself and my mentor, the photojournalist Majid Saeedi, has helped me a lot with that process.
