Sarbaz
Sarbaz
Sarbaz
By Shirana Shahbazi
Sarbaz
Sarbaz
Sarbaz
With a desert in the background, a young Iranian soldier poses for the camera: standing straight, eyes squinting in the bright sun. The photograph was taken by the Iranian photographer Shirana Shahbazi. Without lapsing into oriental cliché (veiled woman, deserts, odalisque) her work records the everyday life of present-day Iran in which tradition is interwoven with acquisitions from the modern world. The people in Shahbazi’s portraits are portrayed as representatives of a social class, such as a female office worker, a fundamentalist or a soldier. Shahbazi uses this to show us a cross-section of modern Iranian society. For example, this picture of young Sarbaz in soldier’s clothing is a portrait of one soldier in Iran.