Shahbazi, Shirana (b. 1974), Iranian-born photographer, trained and resident in Switzerland. Shahbazi's photography explores a society whose inhabitants' lives are constantly strung between tradition and change. In 2002 she won the internationally prestigious Citibank Group Photography Prize for her installation Goftare Nik/Good Words. She uses individual images of everyday people and occurrences, her own photographs as well as painted copies of them by Iranian street painters, presented in mosaic-like mural-size installations, to explore cultural stereotypes. These multiple images combine to create a multivalent portrait of Tehran, structurally complex but emotionally detached, evoking a fragmented and contradictory modern Iran.
— Nancy Micklewright
