About me…

About me… (in Persian)

Since my childhood I had a real interest in arts. I started my early art activities with painting when I was 8 years old and the main subject in my paintings were humans. Until the end of the year 1996 I mostly did realistic portrait painting, but in the next year when I won the charcoal face drawing 1st prize among the painting and drawing schools in my hometown, I was introduced to some modern views and styles in painting, and I also entered the wondrous beautiful world of photography in that year (1997).

The enthusiasm of making direct contact with the world around me and knowing the people whom I would photograph, took me from sitting in front of my Canvas for days; where I would drawn in myself, to close contact with nature and society.

Traveling the world and learning various traditions, customs, and exploring historical places is very interesting to me. Cultural identity of the people with different nationalities, languages, cultures and individual and collective inclinations and lifestyles has always been very appealing to me and discovering the hidden depths of these people’s mind and thought which hasn’t been challenged or undergone a change in many years is just amazing to me. I am also very interested in Iranian Studies (Iranology) and I have done personal research in this field in the recent years.

In the last 5 years I’ve continually worked on photographing the nomads of East-Azerbaijan and West-Azerbaijan and I’ve also done a vast relative research in the this field, which I think can be called Peopleography, which also implies the idea of presenting a visual prospect of the people’s life.

For the last 2 years, I’ve worked on the project of  Meymand village, which included the photography of the Meymand village and its Nomads & surroundings along with a thorough field study and research about the origins and history of its people and the place where they’ve chosen to live and spread.

I’m currently working in Tabriz, my hometown, and I’ve recently started Tabriz municipality’s photography project of its historical monuments and archeological sites, especially the Grand Bazar of Tabriz which is the world’s largest covered Bazar.

In the field of photography I’ve had 4 individual and 20 group exhibitions, along with 11 photography festivals, 10 of which I’ve achieved the following titles:

- Special honorary prize of Azerbaijan Nature photography festival, 1999.

- 1st place prize in women photography festival, 2001.

- Participation in the exhibition of chosen works of the 2001 festivals in Geneva.

- 2nd place in the Students’ photography contest/festival of Iran’s National Universities, 2003.

- 1st prize of the Snowman photography festival, 2005.

- 2nd place of the 13th Arts and Religious Literature festival of Iran’s National Universities, 2006.

- 1st place in the professional division of  Iran’s 1st National Festival of Villagers and Nomads, 2006.

- Honorary title of the 13th Festival of Arasbaran Nomads, 2007.

- 2nd prize of National Living Diversity festival, 2008.

- Participation and acceptance in the 2009 Bristol International Salon of Photography in England.

- Gold ISF medals in the 5th INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY EXIBITION “ROCK 2009“  in the Theme B (Free), under the patronage of PSA and FIAP, in Serbia.

- Acceptance in the 1st round of 10th International Digital Imaging Competition 2009 / DVF Deutscher Verband für Fotografie e.V.. Fotofreunde Blaustein.

- Acceptance in the PSEA (The Photographic Salon Exhibitors Association) of Hong Kong, in 2009.

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One of the founders and active members of the Artistic Photography Organization of East-Azerbaijan since 1999.

Member of the Young Researchers Club organization (in the field of Anthropology) since 2004.

Member of the Scientific Psychology Organization of Tabriz Azad University since 2005.