Un/related Memories [soon]
Ashes and Snow [2023]
Eyes Dazzle As They Search for The Truth [2022]
Foam Talent: February 23 — May 22, 2024
Circulation(s): April 6 — 2 June, 2024
Peckham 24: May 17 — May 26, 2024
Belfast Photo Festival: June 1 — June 30, 2024
Athens Photo Festival: June 6 — July 26, 2024
Kranj Photo Festival: August 21 — September 28, 2024
Amin Yousefi was born in 1996 in Abadan, Iran, and holds an MA in Photography from the University of Westminster. He lives and works as a writer, researcher, and image-based artist in London. He has participated in several group exhibitions and prizes, including recently being named a 2024 Foam Talent Award winner. His recent project, "Eyes Dazzle as They Search for the Truth," was selected as a finalist of the Carte Blanche Awards at Paris Photo in 2022. It was subsequently shown with Ag Galerie at the Unseen Art Fair 2023 in Amsterdam. His work has been published in magazines such as Hapax and Aperture, with the article in which he interviewed three artists on "What It Means to Make Photographs as a Young Artist in Iran." Yousefi has also undertaken compelling commission works, including the project "Ruderal Acts, Gardening Beyond the Wall," showcased as part of the HerMAP Art Project at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, Belgium. He was also selected as an Ag Talent for his "Life, Death, and Other Similar Things" project in 2019, exhibited in a solo show at the Ag Galerie. Yousefi has an upcoming display in June 2024 with the Belfast Photo Festival in Belfast, Northern Ireland. A native of Abadan in the province of Khuzestan, Iran's most oil-rich region, and the scene of a bloody war with neighboring Iraq, Yousefi's work examines the event of photography through the socio-political aspect of the medium. His primary concern lies in the implications of the archive, exploring violence against protests in the Middle East enacted by the state and how the act of photography can conceptually mirror the structures of these relationships.
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Instagram Ashes and Snow [2023]I look at their bodies covered in blood, resting on a hospital floor in the darkness of a night as black as their eyes. A group of unknown adolescents whose identities remain unknown. A forgotten subjectivity, now lying somewhere between the visual testimony and the reconstruction of history, as I inevitably become the preserver of their last, cold gaze. The photos of this project were suggested to me by one of my friends, who bought them from a book and archive dealer in Iran. One hundred and twenty-three prints at 10 x 15 cm, to which several new photos were added later. While browsing the internet, I found a surprising photo David Burnett took during the 1979 Revolution in Iran. It depicted a scene from the protest, with one striking detail in Burnett's photo catching my attention — a man adorning a tattered coat with over thirty small snapshots of SAVAK secret police victims. The photographs attached to the old man's clothes were the same pictures I had.
The young people who had not grown old were no longer present, and a man in his 60s was carrying them. The violence of the images was intolerable, so I inverted them to negatives to make them showable. At the same time as the photographs were inverted, the young men in the images were ageing due to their greying hair. Young people who grew old earlier than they should have. Faces that, if they were alive, would resemble my inverted images today and the man in Burnett’s photo, with the only difference being their breath still encased in their chests. Thin and injured bodies were resting on the floor of a hospital in the darkness of the night, as black as their eyes and covered in blood. A group of unknown people whose identities are unknown to me. They leave me alone between the puzzle of photography and the reconstruction of history. The taunts that I can never answer, and I become the toy of their cold smile.
Left: A pro-Khomeini demonstrator dons a jacket decorated with photographs of victims of the shah’s repression and a hat that reads “Crown of the Martyrs” at a Tehran rally. The pictures are snapshots of SAVAK secret police victims, David Burnett, 1979
Right: Details of “An anti-Shah Demonstrator at a Tehran rally.” David Burnett, 1979David Burnett captioned the original photo; "The bodies of five people killed in the street fighting lie at the morgue." Only two photographers captured images in the morgue: David Burnett and the unknown photographer who mysteriously appeared in this one of Burnett's photographs.
Young people who grew old earlier than they should. Faces that, if they were alive in those days, would be similar to my inverse images today, with the difference that they could breathe. Thin and injured bodies, resting on the floor of a hospital in the darkness of the night as black as their eyes and covered in blood. A group of unknown people whose identities are unknown to me. They leave me alone between the game of photography and the reconstruction of history. The taunts that I can never answer, and I inevitably become the toy of their cold smile.
At the same time as the photographs were inverted, the young men in the images were ageing due to their greying hair. This new appearance of the corpses unconsciously reminded me of Zal, one of the mythological characters in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh.
Zāl was born in the eastern province of Sistan to a family of legendary warriors who served as generals in the Persian army. His snow-white hair led his parents to name him Zāl, the Persian word for albino. Due to this characteristic, he was immediately rejected by his father, who blamed the evil spirit for his son's appearance. It was ordered that Zāl be abandoned in the Alborz Mountains. Zāl is a symbol of both demons and fairies in the ancient culture of Persia.