Azadeh Akhlaghi lives and works between Iran and Australia. Azadeh is a post-conceptual artist, beginning her career in 2001. Her main concern is photography, video-arts and making short movies.
Azadeh’s practice acknowledges conceptual and postmodern approaches to contemporary art through photography. She has an MA in Computer Science from RMIT University in Melbourne, while she did her thesis in databases search engine for photos. She was assistant director of Abbas Kiarostami and Manijeh Hekmat between 2005 and 2008 while she made a couple of short films that were screened in numerous film festivals such as Berkeley art museum, Pusan and Oslo.
FBB. The research behind ‘By an Eyewitness’ must have been a challenge. How long did the process take?
The research phase of the project took about three years. I decided to recreate instances from the tragic deaths of figures in Iranian history where there were no cameras present at the time of their occurrences. In reality, I was trying to reconcile this history with the present. Iranians are essentially a mourning nation that in the course of their tragic history have had many deaths, but no time to cry for them. It was as if now, with the accurate reconstruction of the moment of death, even for once, I could say goodbye to the dead and to lay them to rest forever.
FBB. You also have a lot of experience in the film making industry. Talk to us about that.
I made a few documentaries and short movies prior to pursuing photography. At that time I really wanted to direct movies, but later on, slowly and slowly, I concentrated on staged photography.
FBB. The research behind ‘By an Eyewitness’ must have been a challenge. How long did the process take?
The research phase of the project took about three years. I decided to recreate instances from the tragic deaths of figures in Iranian history where there were no cameras present at the time of their occurrences. In reality, I was trying to reconcile this history with the present. Iranians are essentially a mourning nation that in the course of their tragic history have had many deaths, but no time to cry for them. It was as if now, with the accurate reconstruction of the moment of death, even for once, I could say goodbye to the dead and to lay them to rest forever.
FBB. You also have a lot of experience in the film making industry. Talk to us about that.
I made a few documentaries and short movies prior to pursuing photography. At that time I really wanted to direct movies, but later on, slowly and slowly, I concentrated on staged photography.
