SHIRANA SHAHBAZI: My name is Shirana Shahbazi.
The major part of my work is the combinations that I put together between the photographs, which question each other, enrich each other or can be very similar to each other, or very different.
EVA RESPINI: This is a site-specific installation made for MoMA, comprised of wallpaper that wraps around both side of the wall. It’s overlaid with Shahbazi’s photographs. In this work, the artist combines different mediums--the photographs and the ‘wallpaper’—as well as different genres of photography. The color photographs, taken in Shahbazi’s studio, depict abstract, three-dimensional geometric still-lifes. Two black-and-white photographs taken outside depict a mountain—which you’ll see on one side of the wall—and a diver in mid-flight—on the other.
Despite the different genres, Shahbazi explains that the photographs have similarities.
SHIRANA SHAHBAZI: It is a picture of a human but it's very formal. As formal as the pyramids or the colored balls that are here. So the way it is photographed, it is very similar to what I construct in my studio.
EVA RESPINI: Shahbazi makes her work the old-fashioned way—with camera and film. In her still life compositions, she achieves a range of effects by playing with scale, color and multiple exposures rather than with digital manipulation.
SHIRANA SHAHBAZI: Because it's not made digitally, you can see all of the details so it's a balance of perfection and imperfection.
I don’t really care about if it's done digitally or analogue, but it's all about making a way that is fascinating or vivid or irritating enough to make the viewer stay with a picture for a while.