Shayan Sajadian: Dusting off tropes of Iranian life

Shayan Sajadian is quietly revolutionising how we see Iran. While others might be content with familiar scenes—those of bustling bazaars, ornate mosques, dramatic desert landscapes —Sajadian’s work is scraping at this cliched veneer. Instead, he brings us to Iran’s peripheries, inviting us to marvel at an Iran that is defined as much by its contradictions as its traditions. His subjects are the ones that mainstream media often evades, unencumbered by the limiting optic of foreign bias. These are the people who live in the cracks of Iranian society—and each of them rise up in summation against their flattened counterparts broadcasted to the West. 

It’s a path that Sajadian did not expect to take. Initially, photography was his side hustle, something to aid his architectural studies at Shiraz University in Fars, Iran. The camera was, at first, merely a tool for documenting the structures he needed to—buildings, streetscapes, the geometric beauty of old Persian urban planning. But as he ventured into older neighbourhoods in Shiraz, Sajadian’s focus shifted almost involuntarily. He found himself drawn not just to the buildings, but the people inhabiting them. His fascination with these overlooked communities pulled him away from the stringent confines of architecture and into the raw, unfiltered world of documentary photography.

Soon, Sajadian was bringing those living in Iran’s umbrages into sharp relief. The photographer began to connect with those living in the margins of a society, plunging into Iran’s subcultures, particularly the worlds of addiction, poverty, and street life. These are lives often left out of the conversation when it comes to depictions in (any country, but most especially) Iran. Yet for Sajadian, these stories are vital in understanding the full spectrum of what it means to live in a modern city. 

Take, for instance, the tattooed men who loom large in some of his most striking images—muscular, inked to the necks, and often posing in shadowed paths. To the casual viewer, they might seem intimidating or even dangerous–after all, many of these men have been entangled with crime, but Sajadian does not skew them as villains or heroes. Instead, his lens peels back layers on these figures and their contradictions, creating a balance between strength and vulnerability, bravado and fear, defiance and designation. Exhibiting the nuances behind each of his subjects, far beyond what their physical pretenses, is at the heart of Sajadian’s work.

The stripped, gritty quality of his pieces derive from something deeper. Sajadian’s own life is closely intertwined with the struggles he documents. His family’s experience with addiction—his grandfather particularly, who lost everything to it—gave him an intimate understanding of the cycles of suffering that grip so many of his subjects. This personal question lends a quiet but distinct understanding to his work, a feeling that his images are less about distance or pitying observation and more about sympathy and solidarity. The viewer gets the sense that they aren’t just looking at someone else’s life; they’re stepping into a world where fragility and resilience constantly straddle the frame and survival is a daily negotiation.

Since the Mahsa Amini protests erupted in 2022, following the death of a young Kurdish woman in police custody for allegedly wearing her headscarf improperly, the climate for photographers like Sajadian has become even more precarious. In such settings, the camera is more of a weapon than anything truly violent. In spite of these risks, Sajadian continues to wield his lens, driven by the instinct to document the stories that most others would rather ignore. His subjects, too, are remarkably open to having their lives seen and understood in a world that so often glosses them over.

Sajadanian’s images are a foil to the sanitization of Iran; the photos may be unpolished, but certainly not devoid of beauty. In his work, we see the tiniest details that make life in Iran so wholly textured: a woman smoking a cigarette on a rooftop at dusk, a child’s toy discarded in the dirt outside a crumbling apartment building, a group of friends sharing a meal in the gloom of a corner shop. There are moments both tender and rough and many at the same time. They remind us that life is not a monolith, but a medley of ambivalences. They gripe with the viewer’s cognitive dissonance, if only for a few moments. 

This balancing act is particularly striking in Sajadian’s portrayal of women, who, in his images, unflinchingly radiate a muted but palpable strength. Through the contentious political terrain for women in Iran, Sajadian’s photos dare to capture the women perhaps most affected in their moments of unvarnished humanity. It’s all there, whether in a subtle expression or a more overt act of rebellion. But his photos are refreshing in that they don’t turn them into symbols or icons; they remain individuals, bearing multiplicities.

Sajadian stands out head and shoulders in today’s culture that leans toward superficial and digestible artwork. His images don’t offer easy answers or neatly packaged stories, but invite us to sit with our discomfort and engage with these subjects. The frills of aestheticism are ancillary here; it’s his empathy and honesty that makes him a vital voice in contemporary photography. With the intrepid honesty of his work, Sajadian is raising every paradigm for creative expression in the region.