Shadowlands: Zadoc Nava

Zadoc Nava is a British photographer and filmmaker based in London. This book focuses on his most recent photographic series, Shadowlands, which documents life on the streets of Tehran. Reflecting a mood of uncertainty and melancholy, the images reveal a glimpse of ordinary life in the neighborhoods of what is remarkably turning into one of the world’s most documented cities.\n\nShadowlands is punctuated by images of the monumental, propagandist street-art and religious posters that dominate the city. The photos reveal the separate but parallel existence of men and women within Iranian society, living under the gaze of the mullahs, the tension between modernity and tradition, and an atmosphere of uncertainty and disquiet. The congested streets and cityscapes of Tehran provide the backdrop to a series of portraits that show the inhabitants immersed in their own reverie, strangely disengaged from their surroundings.\n\nThrough a lyrical documentary approach, Shadowlands presents a complex, moving, and unfamiliar image of Iran, with moments of unexpected humor. The implication of narrative apparent in much of the work reflects Nava’s background as a filmmaker.\n\nIn addition to Nava’s work in Iran, Shadowlands covers several other projects, revealing his fascination with people and culture, from the situations documented in Havana Cuba and Undercurrent in South East Asia, to his latest project A Feminine Touch, about British women boxers in the run up to the 2012 Olympics. Nava’s own sense of difference and dislocation within his country of origin and his acute faculty for observing and recording the remarkable in the unremarkable is beautifully reproduced in this first published collection of his work.\n\nThe book includes an introduction by David Bate and an essay by Amna Malik. Shadowlands, like Nava’s photographs, provides an unusually honest and thought-provoking look into the reality of a city and its cultural identity. This book therefore is an essential read for anyone interested in recent developments in contemporary photography.\n\nDavid Bate is widely known for his work as an artist, writer and teacher on photography. He is Director of the international MA Photographic Studies course at the University of Westminster in London. His work is shown worldwide, recently at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, and the Biennale of Photography in Istanbul and he has published a broad range of essays on contemporary photography, criticism, history and theory.\n\nAmna Malik is a Lecturer in Art History and Theory at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. She has written extensively about the relationship between art, cultural politics and psychoanalysis, and on Iranian contemporary art and the relationship between art and globalization.