Maryam Saeedpoor is a Tehran-based Iranian photographer whose theatrically staged portrait work has made her one of the most significant visual voices documenting the lives, resistance, and interior worlds of Iranian women. Born in Tehran in 1984, she operates at the intersection of art photography, photojournalism, and quiet defiance, creating images that are simultaneously intimate and politically charged.
Early Life and Formation
Saeedpoor grew up in a strict, religious, and traditional family environment. She has described her upbringing as one defined by pressure and resistance, saying. Her early creative instincts found expression first in drawing and painting. Photography came later, and when it did, it offered her a more immediate instrument for storytelling. She trained as a photojournalist and spent years as a press photographer, a grounding that permanently shaped her artistic sensibility.
By the age of 16, Saeedpoor had already participated in a youth art festival; at 21, she appeared in a group exhibition of realist and hyper-realist paintings, signalling from the outset her range across disciplines and media.
The Art of Necessary Ambiguity
One of the most distinctive hallmarks of Saeedpoor’s practice is her use of deliberate ambiguity — an aesthetic and political necessity shaped by the realities of living and working under Iran’s censorship regime.
This self-censorship, however, is not merely a constraint. It has become a generative artistic strategy. She acknowledges: The compressed, coded nature of her imagery carries layers that audiences in freer societies might construct differently.
Women, Life, Freedom : The Defining Series
Following the death of Mahsa Amini in Iranian police custody in September 2022 and the historic wave of protest it ignited across the country, Saeedpoor channelled her grief and rage into the most politically direct body of work of her career.
“This series was fueled by the anger and the fury that I felt in response to what was happening in our society during the Mahsa revolution. The Mahsa revolution was a really special thing in our society. It has affected and changed all of us and made huge waves through our society that I was responding to,” she explains. The photographs are theatrically staged studio portraits set against ornate Persian carpets and traditional textiles — symbols of Iranian domestic life repurposed as backdrops for acts of rebellion.
The series also includes women with dyed hair in vivid colours, blindfolded figures, women riding motorcycles through Tehran streets, and other images staging the collision between modernity and state-imposed tradition. The series’ text from Saeedpoor’s own hand captures the urgency: “We are citizens of this country (Iran), but we cry tears of blood. We are mourners. Iranian women are crying for freedom that they have been deprived of.”
Process and Collaboration
Saeedpoor typically scouts her portrait subjects in cafés, galleries, and Tehran’s streets though she deliberately photographs in the relative safety of her own studio. Her method is highly premeditated. She also uses Instagram to put out open calls, inviting women to submit photographs of themselves for consideration.
Her most significant artistic mentor has been the Iranian war photojournalist Majid Saeedi, who has documented conflicts across Afghanistan and Iraq. It is from him that she has developed both her editorial rigour and her understanding of photography as documentation of the human condition.
Recognition and Exhibitions
Saeedpoor has exhibited internationally in California, Turkey, Germany, and Japan, in addition to showing in Iran — though both of her domestic exhibitions were shut down by authorities after only a few days. This experience of state closure has been deeply damaging: “I don’t see any future for myself and my photographs in Iran. I hope one day I can exhibit outside of Iran… It is emotionally very hard to bounce back from that and start again with the fear that my future exhibitions may also be closed,” she has said.
In September 2024, her Women, Life, Freedom series was awarded the Global Peace Photo Award 2024 at the Austrian Parliament in Vienna, where she received the Alfred Fried Peace Medal. The jury, which included collaborators from UNESCO, the World Press Photo Foundation, and the International Press Institute, selected her work from 21,220 submissions across 112 countries. The award citation noted: “With the subtle means at her disposal Maryam Saeedpoor tries to work for a more peaceful life and for the recognition of the many great women in Iran.”
Cover Image: Woman Life Freedom series. | Image Credit: Maryam Saeedpoor
References
- Hot Mirror, Maryam Saeedpoor, November 2023 — hot-mirror.com
- Global Peace Photo Award, Women, Life, Freedom — Shortlist 2024 — globalpeacephotoaward.org
- Global Peace Photo Award, Winners 2024 — globalpeacephotoaward.org
- See-zeen, 9 Female Iranian Photographers — see-zeen.com
- Instagram, @msaeedpoor — instagram.com/msaeedpoor
- Gerd Ludwig Photography, Winners of the 2024 Global Peace Photo Awards — gerdludwig.com
Athmaja Biju is the Editor at Abir Pothi. She is a Translator and Writer working on Visual Culture.
