2012
photography
105 x 157 cm
Abbas Kiarostami is an important figure in cinema of the past thirty years, having received, among other distinctions, the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival, the Golden Lion in Venice, and the Golden Leopard at Locarno. His photography is just as significant, featuring in prestigious museums throughout the world.
Less well-known than his films, Abbas Kiarostami’s photographic work is something that demands discovery. According to him, “photography is the mother of cinema [...] The beauty and the sublime that I was encountering in nature was too unbearable for me not to share. I bought a camera and started to take photographs. These images remained hidden away in a box, until the day that I decided to exhibit them, around ten years ago.”
The works exhibited reveal the artist’s concentrated vision, which explores the theme of the window, highlighting a landscape or view through reframing and a play on light versus darkness. Kiarostami looks for the simplest expression of an image to convey his lyricism. As if he were discharged from carrying the heavy “load” of narration, his photographs give themselves in to an intense mediation, in an empty and quiet world, as if waiting for people to come and fill these images with stories. |
