Siamak Eskandari

About

He first started his professional career as a photographer while working as architect in charge and manager of Pasargadae (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) for Iranian Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization (ICHTO). Along his official duties, he documented various Achaemenid and Sassanid relics. He spent 10 years (1999-2009) in mapping all 38 Sassanid rock reliefs scattered around the country by taking thousands of Black and White film photographs. In parallel, Siamak has also been interested in the photography of cities and urban landscapes. During his two trips to Japan in 2002 and 2003, he focused on Japanese traditional culture and architecture in contrast to its modern day lifestyle and urban sceneries. Two years later, the Japanese Embassy in Tehran showcased his photographs in an exhibition in Tehran in the framework of Japanese Cultural Week program. Toronto offered Siamak a new photographic experience. The stark architecture and the new urban context transformed his work dramatically. In series of works that were exhibited under the title “Reflection”, he envisioned the city as an embodiment of various events each with distinct narratives. The architectural surfaces, the voids and the public spaces provided him with the stage to compose unique and surreal readings of the city. Narratives were carefully constructed through superimposition of fleeting urban images as an approach to mimic . Subsequently, Siamak’s photographic studies approach the realm of memory rather than the realistic portrayals of the familiar city.