Photography

Shahriar Mazandi’s photographic journey began in 1993 after an exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society of South Western American deserts and highways.

His first commercial job in 1995 was to photograph Blackhawk Collection historic cars for their catalogue for the classic car auction in Monterrey, as part of the Laguna Seca and Pebble Beach automotive weekend in Northern California, as sponsored by Daimler Chrysler.

In 2000 his photographic essays on California’s automotive  and gang cultures were syndicated internationally by Katz Pictues/Camera Press. In the same year he exhibited these works at the Andipa Gallery in London in a show entitled ‘Ghosts and Machines’ along with photographs of Recoleta cemetery in Argentina.

Venturing beyond painting and photography, in 2005 came a collaboration with French glass manufacturer Lalique, resulting in the Lalique Garden that won a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show.

In 2008 Harrow School hosted ‘Harrovian Photographers throughout the Ages from William Henry Fox Talbot to Cecil Beaton to Patrick Lichfield to today’s photographers. Mazandi had more works on display than any living photographer.

Photography of fire began in 2009. In 2012 these were mirrored six times on Photoshop, resembling Rorschach ink blot tests. Unlike the tesseract paintings these works have no fixed point of reference. What is observed is subject to the perception of the viewer. Some might see skeletal structures, distorted anatomy or impossible zoological forms - whatever is in the mind’s eye of the viewer.

The Iceland portfolio was photographed on a midwinter’s day in February 2020 just before the Covid19 lockdowns in that year. They represent a moment of freedom within the vast, desolate and majestic expanse that is Iceland.

More recent work relies on a technique that resembles what was known as solarisation in the time of analogue film. They offer a threshold to another place, like Alice walking through the looking glass - a doorway to alternate realms.