Pooyan Tabatabaei was born on July 7, 1979 in Tehran. In 2000, he finished his university by achieving B.Sc. of Industrial Management. By the middle of the year 2000, he chose Canada as a second home. The year 1998 was a milestone for Pooyan, when he started working with a new medium in his life and it was a Canon F1 Camera. When asked how he feels about photography he said: “Seeing the world through my lens is a liberating experience for me that helps me catalogue and reality and share my experiences with others”.
Pooyan Tabatabaei
There is an abiding philosophical question – who are we and why are we here? The answer lies, in part, before the question is even asked, in the undeniable presence of existence.
Pooyan Tabatabaei’s recent series becomes a viable visual answer to the question. The set-up is simple. A figure, we assume it is a woman, in a chador, interacts with a snowy landscape and from that interaction an integration happens. There is equality between the two. The landscape embraces the cloaked figure.
The woman is camouflaged by the billowing second skin. She has an undeniable place in the organic order, even more so than if her identity was clearer for in Tabatabaei’s visual interpretation, there is no conflict between the human and the landscape, no assertion on the part of the dominant species to rule, but rather a melding into each other.
The sensation of equable exchange can be broken down within a compositional analysis. When the chador is spotted and closer to the snowy whites of the background, it forms a mute liaison with the footprints, or the patterns of snow on the branches. The figure breaks the static vertical insistence of the trunks of the trees as they have, in turn, broken the continuity of the perfect whiteness.
The spotted covering lends itself to the shape of the body or accepts the influence of the wind. The black chador and the white snow are also is engaged in a visual conversation. The stubborn insistence of the dark shape, often abstracting the figure or making it into an anthropomorphic characterisation of another species, also has an irreversible part to play in the unfolding of things.
The woman in the chador takes up space as a negative shape between positives or as a figure enveloped by the ground rather than sitting upon the background.
The metaphor is grand and well spoken. Between the black and the white, the symbolic positive and negative, the plus and minus, there is a divine balance. The balance is beauty. The equation is perfect and Tabatabaei has stopped the blur of time and recorded the symmetry, between man (or woman) and the earth, between the figure and the ground, between the asking of the question and the receiving of the answer.
Julie Oakas
Exhibitions
2007 Group Exhibition - Humanitarian Photography Award Exhibition – London, (England) 2007 The art of photography show - San Diego, (USA) 2007 Captured Moments – Arta Gallery, Toronto , (Canada) 2007 Group Exhibition– Edinburgh, (Scotland) 2007 The 10th Luis Valtueña International Humanitarian Photography Award Exhibition – Madrid , (Spain) 2006 Tasvir-e-Sal Photo and graphic festival , Iran 2005 6th Annual Children photography (Iran) 2005 Tasvir-e-Sal Photo and graphic festival, Iran 2004 25 years history of Azzadi Square (Iran)
2004 9th Tehran photo biennial, exhibited Museum of contemporary art. ( Iran)
Achievements
2007 Honerable MentionAward forom The Art of photography show (USA) 2007 Award Nominated for the 10th Luis Valtueña International Humanitarian Photography (Spain)
2006 Award Nominated for WACC photographic competition (USA) 2005 Award Nominated for 6th Children photography Contest (Iran) 2004 Award Nominated for Azzadi Square Contest (Iran) 2004 Award Nominated for 9th Tehran photo biennial (Iran) 2003 Silver award from the International society of photographers for the image titled ‘Flight to Eternity’ (USA)
2003 Bronze Medallion for the collection Called “Canadian Maritimes” the International society of photographers (USA)
