Rahi Rezvani is an Iranian-born artist based in the Netherlands.
An alchemist who puts his soul into his images, Rahi constantly searches for the chemical
reaction that can occur between him, his camera’s shutter, and his subject. Whether
photographing ensembles, world-renowned artists, or everyday obsessions, he works
instinctually. His persistent, and humble, hope is that he will be able to capture the unique
energy that arises when he and his subjects come together.
The results of these encounters are unpredictable and varied in form. They may be still lives
that evoke Renaissance paintings in their composition, or visceral portraits that capture the
intensity of performance. In each image, he unlocks both the light and the dark. These dualistic
forces do not antagonize each other however. Rather, Rahi shows how they fuse
harmoniously and reveals the ways in which light emerges from the beauty of darkness.
Despite the unpredictability of each session, Rahi’s photographs are always honest.
Suffused with color or black and white, his work often appears otherworldly, even unnatural. But
his uncanny images never present lies. They are fantasies—fantasies whose truths require no
words.
I was born in Tehran.
When I think back to my youth, an energy of true love between people and as a country overwhelms me.
Even with the darkness of war permeating our lives, people still gathered together so often, creating for me an unbelievably happy childhood.
At one point, we even had about 20 family members living together in our big house, due to the war.
I felt different and most of them knew that I was kind of unalike, even when I was just six years old, they called me an artist.
From a young age, I loved to paint, and my parents, who have always encouraged my work.
In 1990, during the dry heat of the Tehran summer, my father took me to the studio of his friends Behzad and Koorosh Shishegaran, both well-known painters, who took me as their students.
It was heaven to be around their paints, the colors, the canvases.
They taught me the basic foundations of image-making: how to create balance, good composition, harmony, meaning, and feeling through the shape and position of lines.
I also learned discipline from them and that you need time to finish a work of art.
Photography became part of my life not long after those painting lessons.
When I was 12, my father bought me a basic Zenith camera.
I just started to shoot, learning how to compose images simply by creating them over and over again.
Self-teaching in this case was less a desire than a condition forced upon me.
There were virtually no photography exhibitions in Iran at that time.
So much else was simply prohibited: you couldn’t have long hair as a man or headphones in your ears while walking down the street; films were barely legal, and those I could see were only screened once or twice.
Despite those restrictions, I was, in a way, developing my first cinematographic language with that camera without realizing it—cutting the head at the middle of the forehead for example and other “strange” things that no one taught me to do.
There was, after all, no one I knew to ask.
I remember one night, when I was 15, I found my mother in the kitchen after getting ready for a party, sitting there while waiting for my father.
Inspired by her face, I photographed her.
I’ve kept that image ever since, not least because it began my exploration of portrait photography.
My family made sure I continued taking portraits too: not long after I took that photograph, many of them asked for their own photos.
Fortunately, photographing them was not forbidden, unlike so many other subjects in Iran at that time.
My passions for photography and painting led to my taking a job as a set designer for films when I was just 17 and still worrying about my maths exams at Alborz High School.
One day, a serendipitous event happened: the stills photographer Mehrshad wasn’t able to come to the set of a film on which I was working.
The crew told the director that I knew the camera, so he had me take over the shoot.
I shot the film until the end of the day, and both because the director appreciated my work and because Mehrshad, who remains a friend, had so many other jobs, I was asked to take over permanently.
That year, my father again bought me a camera, a Pentax K1000.
It probably cost him one-month’s salary.
In 1996, I enrolled at the University of Tehran’s School of Art to study graphic design, I could never have known that I would be exiled from my country before I could complete my degree.
I lived through the war with Iraq, during which I remember all the mirrors in our house shattering after a bomb exploded nearby.
I lived through censorship that made, for example, the first image of a naked woman I ever saw something so overcharged that I began to think about anatomy in a way that remains an influence on my work.
And yet a photograph I took of a joyful, innocent scene—an image that only the government censors could find objectionable—led to my unplanned exit from my home when I was only 19.
Overnight, I became an exile, living in refugee camps throughout the Netherlands for six-and-a-half years.
I never thought about giving up my passion however.
Like everyone in Iran of my generation, from birth my life was overshadowed by war and illegality, and later the freedom and passion that exists after a conflict ends.
That experience remains at the core of my images.
In 2004, I enrolled at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague, where friends and neighbors explained the assignments to me because most classes were in Dutch.
Yet it was a challenge just to survive, let alone complete my work.
Sometimes I had to choose between getting three rolls of film or buying food, as I only had financial assistance for my studies.
I often chose the film.
I had to do home work inside the refugee-camp toilets with a laptop to have privacy from the dozen or so others inside my building.
My computer and camera, which I rented from the school and kept in a bag, became fused to my body as I had to sleep with them and carry their 15 kilos with me anywhere I went so they wouldn’t be stolen.
But I don’t view these experiences as sad.
They made me that much stronger, and fearless.
That strength and fearlessness infuses my work and influences how I think about myself.
I still do everything on my own, from idea to printing the images.
Despite my professors’ best efforts, I rejected the labels so many of them wanted to assign to me, the category of artist they thought defined me.
I never liked the idea of starting one thing and continuing with it for my entire life.
I’m an image-maker, who is looking for new obsessions.
At the academy, I thought I would learn much more than I did, but it was not the happiest place for me.
After a few months, I understood that I have to learn things for myself, that not everyone needs to hang onto school for their future.
Perhaps it was because I was always experiencing what was around me in a way different from others.
Creating a beautiful picture is all that matters to me.
That only becomes possible during a shoot when the energies exuded by me and an object connect and an electric shock visible in the camera occurs.
Sometimes I’m not ready for that.
Sometimes the object isn’t either.
One side has to create movement, otherwise, as a Persian proverb says, it is like stirring a stone in water: you can stir and stir, but the two will never combine.
That moment is never the same for different subjects.
Everyone deserves their own light, their own mood.
Different faces call for different composition.
I also arrive at every shoot in a new mood and trust it, whatever it is—because, based on that mood in that moment, I can create something unique, something that is not repetitious.
It prevents me from staying within a bubble.
It allows me to surprise myself with each photograph and, in turn, hopefully surprise you as well.
I grasp this even without a camera in my hands, too, because the camera is always in my mind.
Though I admire many photographers, from William Mortensen, Helmut Newton to Anton Corbijn, my inspirations come more from painters like Hieronymus Bosch, Francis Bacon and Rembrandt, music, human body and simply talking to people.
You really don’t need anything more than people giving themselves to you.
I am fortunate that so many people have given themselves to me in that way.
Now I am fortunate to give myself to my partner and daughter.
But I miss the country where I was born and which I may never see again.
My father has phrased it in the best way: I have my life back even though it is by a beautiful, if bittersweet, accident that got me where I am today.
My name is Rahi Rezvani
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