Clearing, 2015
Alborz Kazemi (b. 1989, Tehran, Iran) studied Painting at Tehran’s School of Fine Arts. After his graduation, he became more interested in photography and cinema and most of his works have been photography-based. Kazemi has documented regional press in videos and photographs for years. As a documentarist he has lived with the belief that a photograph is a reference. Skeptical today of this referential hubris, he is now destroying and altering his negatives to reclaim emotions and experiences he feels is lost. Returning to images that he has been storing for years, he realized at some point that there is always a loss in the stutter of a photograph. The fact that a photograph flattens the world of things, its content is at the mercy of many outside forces, and finds new identity in its presentation casts doubt as to the nature of its referential status.