Shadi Ghadirian: Iranian Photographer

Shadi Ghadirian is one of Iran's leading contemporary photographers. Born in Tehran in 1974, she has exhibited widely in Europe and the US, and her work has been collected by museums worldwide. She came to the limelight in the late 90s with her Untitled Qajar series, in which she examines the paradoxical position of women in Iran. Women in traditional clothing pose with items such as a bicycle - permitted a hundred years ago, and now forbidden to women. Ghadirian's oeuvre is a spirited wink at authority. With witty parodies of domesticity, she neatly sidesteps both restrictions and expectations.