For Abbas Kowsari (Tehran, 1970) photography is an enduring source of power and a way of talking to the world. He has worked for over ten years at Iranian leading newspapers, most of them now banned from publishing. He currently works as the senior photo editor for Shargh newspaper in Tehran. Internationally he has been published in the New York Times, Time magazine, Paris Match and Der Spiegel amongst others.

Kowsari’s work is balanced somewhere between documentary photography and fine art – his saturated colours, delicate washes, and refined emotional content sit alongside his wry commentaries, and distanced characters, playing out scenes within his frames like actors caught in a Brechtian drama. All are tangled in the web of history, moments stilled in time, events which one day will be reflected upon as “then”, “in those days”.

In 2009 Kowsari was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet in Paris and the Magic of Persia in London. His work is part of the British Museum Collection and the LACMA in Los Angeles a.o.

source: The Wapping Project Bankside and AG Galerie