Launch 6pm Thu 23 May
The Library Project
4 Temple Bar Street, Dublin 2
Tabriz to Shiraz is the major new 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.
Tabriz to Shiraz is Pannell’s debut book and will be a significant publication, designed by celebrated London studio Daly & Lyon and published by Melbourne imprint Perimeter Editions in conjunction with Hillvale, who supported Pannell’s second trip to Iran via a Hillvale Project Grant. The book will be launched alongside a major exhibition of Pannell’s work at Hillvale Gallery in Melbourne in April 2019, before a subsequent launch at Offprint London, at Tate Modern, in May 2019 and before making its way to The Library Project, Dublin, for PhotoIreland Festival!
About Sarah Pannell
Sarah Pannell is an Australian documentary photographer whose work concerns culture, landscape, tradition and community. Sarah received a BA International Studies from Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia (2009) and a BA Photography, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia (2012). Travelling regularly, Sarah’s work observes how a landscape is marked by both history and accelerated modernisation, capturing the tension between these different influences and the result when past and present collide.