O Gallery at Photo London 2023

Established in Tehran in 2014, O Gallery is a platform that supports and displays Iranian artists' distinct visual experiences, emphasizing 'visuality' as a critical tool. For the gallery, ‘form’ is not a mere aesthetic element; it is a characteristic of criticism that, in its ideal state, goes beyond the standardized aesthetic norms and makes the concrete meaning of the works problematic. Where semantic and visual limitations are challenged, 'form' then acquires social relevance. The two photographers selected for the upcoming edition of Photo London, Kaveh Kazemi (b. 1952) and Mohammadreza Mirzaei (b. 1986), are two prominent photographers in contemporary Iranian photography, each of whom is known for different characteristics. Kazemi is known for his brilliant press history, having worked with publications such as Time, Newsweek and the New York Times. He has documented the most important social realities of the country, such as the 1979 revolution and the Iran-Iraq war; and he has created these series with the aesthetics defined by instant and moment. Mohammadreza Mirzaei is one of the photographers of the new generation of Iranian photography, who, by studying in the West, his photographs establish a critical relationship with mainstream Western photography. Active as an art writer and theorist as well, Mirzaei decontextualizes and juxtaposes different photos in his projects. His strategy is to search for intertextual relationships among the entire series. In doing so, he challenges their citational and concrete qualities and gives them a new power. In this presentation, by putting together the works of these two photographers, O Gallery intends to draw attention to 'the similar, yet dissimilar' nature of their work and introduce a new face of contemporary Iranian photography that has received little attention. As we see in Kazemi's photos of the 1979 Iranian revolution and Mirzaei's timeless images, this photography is intensely visual and does not depend on the representation of cultural and historical elements. Instead, through their unique approaches to street photography, these two photographers endeavor to construct their identity through a different photographic language. 11-14 May 2023 Stand E14 Somerset House Strand London, WC2R1LA For more information click here.