Author(s): Sarah Pannell

Photography

Tabriz to Shiraz is debut book project by Melbourne-based photographer Sarah Pannell. The publication draws on a vibrant series of photographs taken during her travels through Iran in 2016 and 2017, which saw her navigate vast stretches of the country. On her first visit, she travelled from the capital, Tehran, north to Qazvin and west to Tabriz, south to Isfahan and Shiraz, and east to Kerman and Yazd, while on her second trip she explored regions such as the Gilan Province, which borders the Caspian Sea, and Kurdistan in the mountainous region bordering Iraq. Beyond that of a mere travelogue, the book assumes a position that flits between the poetic, intimate, incisive and playful in its un-layering of contemporary Iran’s visual, cultural and architectural languages and subjectivities. Across photographic modes spanning portraiture, landscape, architecture and impromptu formalism, Pannell offers a series of vantages on a place that proves at once familiar, foreign and happily jarring in its multiplicity.