Mohsen Rastani

Mohsen Rastani (1958–2026, Khorramshahr, Iran) was one of the most recognized contemporary photographers in Iran. Trained in photography at the University of Tehran, he began his career as a photojournalist during the Iran-Iraq War, where his early work documented the stark realities of conflict. His reputation, however, was forged through a series of portraits that redefined the visual language of Iranian photography. For over three decades, Rastani traveled across Iran with nothing more than his camera and a simple white backdrop, transforming streets, homes, and public spaces into temporary studios. In these improvised settings, he invited ordinary people—families, couples, soldiers, strangers to face the lens directly. His portraits were stripped of artifice: unretouched, frontal, and often monumental in scale, echoing the formal neutrality of identity photographs while revealing layers of vulnerability, dignity, and individuality.

Beyond Iran, Rastani photographed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lebanon and other regions scarred by conflict, always with the same commitment to truth and presence. In Sarajevo, he spent two years under the Siege, from 1994 to 1996, covering the capital and life of its ordinary people.

His photographs were exhibited widely, including at the São Paulo Biennial (1998), the Venice Biennale (2003), the Gwangju Biennale (2006) and in institutions such as the MAXXI Museum in Rome and the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris. His images appeared in major international publications and continue to influence a new generation of photographers in Iran and abroad.

Mohsen Rastani lived and worked in Germany in his later years. His practice remained centered on the human face as a mirror of society, history, and memory, an uncompromising search for the invisible truths hidden in plain sight.

Mohsen Rastani passed away on 25 October 2026 in Iran. https://mohsenrastani.com/