Behnam Sadighi: The Reminder

With Laure Giletti, Doreen Mende, Behnam Sadighi and Hamid Severi (on Skype).

This publication is part of the project The Reminder by Behnam Sadighi, conceived in the frame of the fellowship programme MOP CAP 2013 with an exhibition at The Showroom from September 8 – 13, 2014 and the residency programme Delfina Foundation in London.

Since December 2013 Behnam Sadighi has been working closely with curator and theorist Doreen Mende to develop his project for the Winner’s Exhibition. Prior to the exhibition Behnam started his three-month residency at Delfina Foundation. As part of the Prize a series of events including an exhibition, a panel discussion and a book launch will form Behnam Saidghi’s fellowship during his stay in London.

Sadighi’s work is founded in documentary photography. He develops his ideas through the phenomena of his surroundings caused by socio-political and cultural issues. The experiences that have the most powerful effects on Iranian lifestyle and relationships, particularly in urban environments. These changes in phenomena and self, play an integral role in reflecting his personal interpretation of life and living.

His most recent project is an attempt towards an-other look at the Facebook profile pictures of Iran’s youth. Through a reconstruction of the portraits their authorship is lost in the midst of their innumerability. These pictures, usually taken as snapshots, seem to conceal the represented person as well as all of the elements that characterise them. Does such loss of the authorship and privation of representation occur because of the countless-ness of the photographs, or is it because their viewers are skimming through them so quickly? Is it caused by a desire in making and/or representing a different sort of being in a matter of seconds? Or, it is such way of doing, a remembrance of an existence that shares the untold and the hidden in a corner of time?

In collaboration with

Magic of Persia