AMAK MAHMOODIAN
Saturday, February 20, 2021 01:00pm PST
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All photos © Amak Mahmoodian, from Zanjir
About Amak Mahmoodian
PhotoAlliance welcomed photographer Amak Mahmoodian for an online lecture and presentation about her photography and new book Zanjir (2019, RRB Photobooks). This was the opening event of the 2021 PhotoAlliance spring lecture series.
Born in Shiraz, Iran, Amak Mahmoodian currently lives in Bristol, UK. She earned a PhD from the European Centre for Photographic Research at the University of South Wales, and both an MA and BA from the Art University of Tehran, Iran. Throughout her career Mahamoodian has focused on the stories of women across cultures and generations. Her work often incorporates archival images within her own photographs, harnessing photography’s pliable relationship with time and picture space. In her own words: “My work questions notions of identity and home, bridging a space between personal and political. Through my journey I explore the effects of exile and distance on memory, dreams and daily life. Working with images, poems and archives I look for the lyrical realities framed in the photographs.”
For her lecture with PhotoAlliance, Mahmoodian discussed her most recent series and accompanying book, Zanjir. She describes Zanjir as “a conversation imagined between the Persian princess and memoirist Taj Saltaneh (1883 - 1936) and I”. Combining imagery from a 19th century collection held at Golestan archives in Tehran with photographs Mahmoodian made in contemporary Iran, Zanjir challenges myths of absence and presence.
Zanjir was the winner of the 2020 Photo/Text Book Award at Les Recontres de la Photographie, Arles. The exhibition was shown at the Tbilisi Photo Festival, Greece (2020), the Lumix Festival 2020, Germany, and the Arnolfini arts centre in Bristol, UK.
Mahmoodian has exhibited her photography at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Museum Of Fine Art and Massachusetts College of Art; Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool; and at numerous venues in the UK, India, USA, Argentina, and Nepal. Mahmoodian’s previous books have won multiple awards including Best Socially Concerned Photobooks of 2016 (Humble Arts Foundation), Best Photobooks of the Year, 2016 (Time Magazine), and Best Photo Book of the Year, 2015 (LensCulture).
2021 INTERNATIONAL Lecture Series
For close to two decades, PhotoAlliance has offered wonderful lectures to the Bay Area community, highlighting well-known and celebrated photographers as well as introducing remarkable emerging artists from our community. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in the cancellation of most of our 2020 programs. To make a silver lining of this shutdown period we are launching an International Lecture Series for spring 2021. Using the new normal of online programming, each of the artists in our spring series will be “beaming in” from locations throughout the world.
The PhotoAlliance 2021 International Lecture Series is presented in partnership with the San Francisco Art Institute and the San Francisco Artists Alumni.
