Azadeh Akhlaqi: Mohsen Namjoo Marriage and the Shahin Najafi Controversy

Azadeh Akhlaqi and Abbas Kiarostami

Another important stage in Azadeh Akhlaqi’s artistic career was her work in Iranian cinema.

Between approximately 2005 and 2008, Akhlaqi worked as an assistant director with internationally acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami.

Working within Iranian cinema during this period exposed her to the practical and conceptual dimensions of filmmaking.

Kiarostami was internationally celebrated for his minimalist but deeply observational approach to cinema, and Akhlaqi’s later photographic practice developed a strong cinematic character of its own.

Why Did Azadeh Akhlaqi Move From Film to Photography?

Around 2009, Akhlaqi shifted the main focus of her artistic work from filmmaking toward staged photography.

The change was not necessarily a complete rejection of cinema.

Instead, many elements of cinema remained visible in her photography.

Her images often appear almost like frozen film scenes.

A viewer can look at one of Akhlaqi’s photographs and immediately imagine what happened immediately before and after the depicted moment.

This is an important characteristic of her visual language.

The photograph becomes a single frame from an unwritten film.

Her cinematic experience allowed her to think about photography in terms of:

scene + character + action + atmosphere + lighting + narrative.

This approach eventually became central to her most important project, “According to an Eyewitness.”

August 31, 2026 | 1:56 pm