Amak Mahmoodian, was born in Shiraz in Iran in 1980, the year of the establishment of the Iranian revolution. She currently lives in Bristol, England, where she teaches on the BA and MA courses in photography at the University of the West of England. She graduated from the University of South Wales with a practice-based PHD in photography in 2015 and prior to that received her degree and an MA from the Art University of Tehran.
Amak’s first book, Shenasnameh, was jointly published in 2016 by IC Visual Labs and RRB books and sold out it’s 300 copy print run within two months. The work has been widely exhibited internationally and the book has won multiple awards and has been featured in publications including TIME, Foam magazine and the Guardian.
Amak’s second book, Zanjir, which means ‘chain’ in Persian, was recently released through the same joint publishers and hinges partly on an imagined conversation between herself and the Persian princess and memoirist Taj Saltaneh (1883 - 1936).
On episode 121, Amak discusses, among other things:
- The context behind the Iranian revolution
- Why she grew up ‘really fast’.
- Having ‘the best, most wonderful people’ as teachers at university
- Iranian women having a voice whilst being silent
- Her route through a BA an MA and a PhD
- Her first book, Shenasnameh
- Why she can’t go back to Iran
- Her latest book Zanjir
- The challenges of shooting in Tehran
- The importance of poetry
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“Each project is a chapter in my life. It always starts from the heart. And I just think, ok I’m going to work on that. And it’s a narrative of my own life. But at the same time because of the situation and the place I’m from, this work becomes political in a sense. Or I can say it pertains to a wider social issue which is related to my country.”