Mitra Tabrizian

Mitra Tabrizian (Tehran, Iran). 'Reminiscent of stills from crime movies, Naked City focuses on the moment before or after the crime, yet leaving the criminal event outside the frame. What these photographs portray then are people's reactions to the event, whether they are the victim, the victimiser or the witness. In a society over-saturated with violence, where we have become immune to it, Naked City constructs fragments of narratives, referencing the raw reality of everyday life (some alluding to real events); from gang culture and racial violence, to the brutality against old people, to random attacks by happy slappers* to our indifference when witnessing street violence. So the crime becomes perfect when no one cares, and violence goes on, unnoticed, except for those who have been subjected to it.' 'Most of the settings are of unwanted spaces where no one wants to be; a waste land, disused warehouse, isolated street, abandoned underground, or a dark forest, no longer beautiful, but threatening, or a domestic space, no longer safe, but unsafe. Most of the characters are pushed to the edge, not knowing how to meet the unexpected, all of which construct a mise-en-scène which is unsettling. So, at a metaphorical level the city is stripped bare, revealing the dark side of our contemporary existence where we remain in a state of limbo, like the characters in the Naked City, unable to understand the new condition we are facing!' (*) Happy-slapper: recent trend amongst groups of teenagers who perpetrate arbitrary attacks against pedestrians, film them on their mobiles and then publish the images on the Internet.