Isabelle Eshraghi

Isabelle
Eshraghi

biography

Portrait d'Isabelle Eshraghi, photographe

Franco-Iranian photographer, based in Paris (France)

Born in 1964 in Isfahan of a French mother and an Iranian father, Isabelle Eshraghi was raised in France. At the age of thirty-two, she felt the need to return to her roots and her homeland.

It is quite naturally that her documentary style photography crystallized this double belonging that questions her identity. Her work is a form of self-portrait that questions, beyond the clichés, the current state of Iranian culture. Her photographs contribute to an in-depth approach to society.

While her personal projects dictate the bulk of her photographic activity, she collaborates with the French and international press. Since the beginning of the health crisis, Isabelle Eshraghi has produced a series of assigments for Mediapart on the Vulnerability of Women and precariousness in France.

In 1997, Isabelle Eshraghi was awarded by the Kodak Prize for Photographic Criticism for her work on the women of Isfahan. “By observing their everyday gestures, I tried to discover through them, what kind of woman I could have become if I had lived in Iran“. In 1999, she was awarded by the Villa Medici Hors les Murs Prize for her stories on Iranian youth, and in 2001, she received a grant from the Ministry of Culture’s Incentive Fund for Creation for her work on the sages of Iran.

Isabelle Eshraghi has published four books: Vietnam, l’Esquisse d’un Sourire (L’Harmattan, 1991), Avoir vingt ans à Téhéran (éditions Alternatives, 2002), Femmes hors du voile, with texts by Laure Adler (éditions du Chêne 2008), and L’Oeil d’Ispahan, published in Teheran (éditions Rowzaneh 2018).

She also participated in the collective book : Regards sur le monde: Les visages de la faim, published in 2004 on the occasion of the twenty-five years of Action Contre la Faim (éditions Acropole Belfond) and in 2014 Le Siècle des Femmes which gives a view – through twelve series – of women today (editions Les Arènes).

Series