184 Zahra Moein Najafabadi
Artist Statement My reason for thinking about ‘the image’ originates from a childhood interest in cinema. Cinema induced a sense of drama, creating an observed reality and narratives. In this sense, to balance my weaknesses, life expectations and regrets, cinema created a personal life experience for me that in actuality did not exist. Cinema created its own narrative language for me and redefined certain contexts. Cinema gave a different outlook to my daily routines, and how I think about images. How I question the impact of media on our lives, observations and perceptions. In fact, images motivated me to study photography. My works have always hovered between photography and video, on the border between photographic and cinematographic images. Moving along this border has always made me think of elements such as time, movement and gesture, because our brain and visual memory are triggered by pictures, whether in motion or still. How do we consider an image, in both a temporal and a historical context, and how do we reconsider our perception of movement, time and image along these elements? My research raised questions about visual instruments and cameras and how image texture and aesthetics influence our powers of memory, observation and perception. The main focus of my work is portrait pictures and thinking of their borders and definitions by focusing on everyday life in the private sphere in Iran. Over time, the objects within images have obtained equal status with that of people for me. As a result, I have asked people to think about the objects around them in their everyday lives, housewives, artists, art students, friends and relatives or even strangers. The resulting images of houses and objects will provide us with a new definition of what a portrait is. I want to bring the process of capturing the image itself to the fore. Part of this process is my encounter, as a photographer, with the subject and the camera and the subsequent triangle that is formed between us. Photography is the outcome of a dialogue with my subjects, because when speaking, people are less self-conscious of their bodies and faces. Among the many pictures I take, one will be chosen and it will encompass many genres; a snapshot, candid photography, documentary, a stage and even perhaps a still frame from a movie.