For me, photography is not merely a picture-making method; it is a way of understanding. I believe our experience with photography penetrates our world and sophisticates our vision. I consider practicing photography an epistemological journey; thus, I have always tried to depict my vision, my perception in my photos via digital manipulation.
Minor White says we are so conditioned to [Western] painting as the criterion of the visual aesthetic experience that the possibility of a photograph having another path to aesthetic experience, like a piece of sculpture or a poem, has been overlooked or not realized–if not actually denied or pushed out of the realm of possibilities(Lyons, 1966).
In Nexus of Views, I used photography (a defined objective tool) as a subjective point of view. For this purpose, I depicted home, private spaces, creative work spaces and outdoor activities from different points of view, yet in single pieces. I built my artworks based on Persian miniature painting compositional traditions, with an eye on Proustian aesthetic and borrowing from deadpan photography aesthetics.
In this work, I decoded Persian miniatures and used their codes to encode my spaces via photography. This challenge let me explore other capacities of photography and open a new horizon in my artistic practice. Persian painters do not find themselves committed to present physical time and space. Instead, they offer a new definition of time and space in their works. Time and space have specific importance for Persian painters. According to this approach, each object has been displayed at the best angle and with the best lighting to show the object to advantage, without any considerations for foreshortening or the direction of the lighting that is a sign for the time of day. Figures may appear multiple times. What is indoor or outdoors it ambiguous.
Hesamaddin Rezaei
Lyons, N. (1966). Photographers on photography: a critical anthology: Prentice-Hall.
These works have been exhibited in the Nickle Galleries, Auguest-September 2021, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
