Roya Khadjavi projects and Nemazee Fine Art
Through the lens of five Iranian photographers, the ephemeral nature of ritual and ceremonial performance takes on new permanence, capturing the liminal moments where the mundane transforms into the sacred. These images serve as bridges between the visible and invisible worlds, documenting the precise instances where human gesture becomes a vessel for spiritual and emotional expression.
In the predawn darkness of Ghamsar Kashan, women gather damask roses heavy with dew. As they collect Gol-e Mohammadi before sunrise claims its essence, their fingers perform an ancient dance. In Khorasan's autumn fields, saffron harvesters move like shadows through purple rows. In her series titled invisible memories, Sepideh Salehi captures these moments of beauty and serenity in her diptychs where a harvester’s photograph decorated in pink roses or Saffron Crocus, complement the image of a pink rosebush or crocus field in full bloom.
Referring to the Ancient Greek concept of human flourishing, “Eudemonia”, Eugenie Flochel creates a series of flowers images from an exposed 35 mm film canister that she buried in a pot of violets in her garden for six weeks. Pushing and altering the photographic body of the negatives with soil, water and the environment, the burial and exhumation of the film are intensely experienced as an emotional rebirth that translates visually, giving resonance to time place and process. The series has allowed the artist to introduce the element of chance and surprise as well as the feeling of letting go and collaborating with patience -inherently linked to the healing journey.
In Sublime Sonnetry, Farzaneh Ghadyanloo reflects on the transformative journey of the feminine emerging from humble beginnings, undergoing miraculous changes, and embodying strength and renewal. Using photography cutouts, flower petals, plants, and found objects she weaves the narratives of femininity, beauty and growth in resin emphasizing life’s transformations. Like the flowers' sublime transformation into ethereal essences, the film’s emergence marked by earth's careful touch and the cutouts and objects embedded in resin- each frame is a testimony to the gentle transformation. The violet's soil becomes both grave and womb, the fields of Kashan and Khorasan liquify their precious blooms through ritual harvest and the resin, due to its nature becomes the symbol of unpredictability and change. In this dance of decomposition and rebirth, all processes reveal nature's power to mark, alter, and ultimately heal what we surrender to its care.
Like the ritual harvests and buried film in this exhibition, Negin Mahzoun’s practice connects the visible and invisible, using thread as a bridge between past and present, body and memory. She uses textiles and self-portraiture to explore memory, gender, and inherited trauma through a deeply personal lens. Taught embroidery by her grandmother at thirteen, she sees sewing as a quiet ritual—an act of remembrance and transformation. In her work, self-portraits printed on fabric are stitched over until they fade, symbolizing erasure, healing, and rebirth.
In the “The Salt Waltz” series by Tahmineh Monzavi, she turns her lens to the extraordinary salt mines of Garmsar in Semnan province, where rare blue salt forms deep within the earth. There, she documents a woman dancing with cotton flowers and performing intimate bathing rituals in a green, salted pond. Within this harsh yet magnificent landscape, the woman moves freely, unbound by judgment, in harmony with nature. In this salt marsh, where no seed will root, the cotton flowers become symbols of a distant Eden. The images evoke tenderness and resilience—fragile hopes carried like branches, dancing endlessly across lifeless land.
The tenth edition of Photo London opens its doors at Somerset House
From 15 to 18 May, Preview Day 14 May 2025.