Exhibition Views
Exhibition view of Persian Landsketches | Camera Rosea,
Ithaque, Paris, France, 2026
Exhibition view of Persian Landsketches | Camera Rosea,
Ithaque, Paris, France, 2026
Exhibition view of Persian Landsketches | Camera Rosea,
Darkroom, Ithaque, Paris, France, 2026
DARKROOM
Exhibition view of Persian Landsketches | Camera Rosea,
Darkroom, Ithaque, Paris, France, 2026
Exhibition view of Persian Landsketches | Camera Rosea,
Darkroom, Ithaque, Paris, France, 2026
For more than thirty years, Mehran Mohajer has explored photography as a sensitive language in which the image does not merely show, but also questions the act of looking itself.
Born in Tehran in 1964, where he continues to live and work, the Iranian photographer, writer, translator and educator, trained in photography and linguistics, has developed a practice that extends beyond the simple representation of reality. Through blurred, fragmented or partially obscured images, Mehran Mohajer seeks to stage the limits of perception. Influenced by Persian poetry, particularly that of Hafez, as well as by Western poetry, including Baudelaire, his work transforms photography into a space between presence and absence, document and imagination.
Persian Landsketches | Camera Rosea
The exhibition brings together two emblematic series from the artist’s practice:
Camera Rosea and Persian Landsketches. While their forms differ, both share a sustained attention to thresholds — between interior and exterior, clarity and erasure, presence and disappearance.
With Camera Rosea, Mehran Mohajer retreats into an old wooden camera, painted red. This enclosed space becomes a mental landscape, a refuge situated somewhere between the camera obscura and the camera lucida. Images emerge inverted, blurred and unstable, like memories in the process of taking shape. More than a technical apparatus, the red camera functions as an intimate sanctuary: it simultaneously confines and liberates a silent love for photography, transforming the act of taking a photograph into a form of meditation.
Persian Landsketches, meanwhile, turns the gaze towards the landscape, but towards a landscape that is never still. Informed by Persian poetry — particularly Hafez — and by Baudelaire’s dark modernity, the series proposes a vision in motion, traversed by the photographer’s body. The hand that appears within the image is neither a simple obstruction nor an incidental gesture: it marks a presence and reminds us that seeing is always an embodied experience. The landscape consequently dissolves into a sketch, an unstable territory permeated by a quiet sense of unease.
Between interiority and horizon, these two series articulate the same question: what can the image still do when neither the world nor the gaze remains fixed?
Untitled from Camera Rosea,
2007,
Colour negative, C-print, 26 × 26 cm.
Untitled from Camera Rosea,
2007,
Colour negative, C-print, 26 × 26 cm.
Untitled from the series Persian Landsketches,
2025,
digital print on Canson Baryta photographic paper,
76 × 76 cm.
Biography
Mehran Mohajer (1964–) lives and works in Tehran. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Photography and a Master’s degree in General Linguistics from the University of Tehran. Over the past three decades, his intellectual and visual practice has focused on the dynamics of the camera’s language and explored its limits. He is particularly interested in the interaction between language and image, with a strong engagement with classical Persian literature. Mohajer has presented his work in solo exhibitions in Iran and in group exhibitions in Iran and internationally.
Mehran Mohajer teaches photography and is also a translator and writer. He is a lecturer at the University of Tehran and has taught at various academic institutions over the past thirty years. He has written and translated several books on photography and literary criticism. His writings on photography have been published primarily in Herfeh: Honarmand magazine and in the book Vaghte Aks.
His photographic books include Tehran Bigah (Undated/Displaced Tehran, 2014), Bein o Labein (Between and Non-Between, 2016), Hava-ye Zamin (The Air of the Earth, 2018), and Darbast (Scaffolding, 2020). His books on literature include Vajhegan Adabiyat va Goftman Adabi (Lexicon of Literature and Literary Discourse, 2002, with Mohammad Nabavi) and Be Sooye Zabanshenasiye Sher (Towards a Linguistics of Poetry, 2014, with Mohammad Nabavi).
His translations on photography and art include Baygani va Tan (The Body and the Archive, 2009), Akkassi: Daramadi Enteghadi (Photography: A Critical Introduction, 2011, with Mohammad Nabavi et al.), Mafaim-e Bonyadi-ye Tarikh-e Honar (Critical Terms for Art History, 2016, with Mohammad Nabavi), and Honar va Akkassi (Art and Photography, 2025).
Untitled from the series Persian Landsketches,
2025,
Digital print on Canson Baryta photographic paper,
76 × 76 cm.
This exhibition is a collaboration between Ithaque and Zaal Art Gallery
Zaal Art Gallery is an international gallery based in Ontario, Canada, founded by Hormoz Hematian, who is also the founder of Dastan Gallery in Tehran, Iran. Building on Dastan’s legacy, Zaal Art Gallery develops a rigorous programme centred on artists’ books and monographs, film screenings and performance projects. The gallery serves as a point of reference for both knowledgeable collectors and art professionals.