© Parisa Azadi

Ordinary Grief

Parisa Azadi

2017-2022 — Iran

About this series

Ordinary Grief is a story of tenuous reconciliation. In 2017, I returned to Iran after 25 years of self-imposed exile, where I embarked on a personal and political reclamation of my identity and history. With images spanning 2017-2022, Ordinary Grief is my attempt to reconcile despair and joy, exhaustion and hope. It’s about ordinary Iranians actively trying to create new futures for themselves despite the odds. It’s a love letter to a country from which I feel estranged, despite having been born there, and to the people who call it home.
As a woman who grew up between East and West, straddling the line between insider and outsider, my experiences are difficult, unromantic, and fragile. I’ve realized that two decades of living outside Iran brought with them a kind of cultural and personal amnesia. Ordinary Grief is also about what it means to forget and what it means to (try to) remember. Always, I’m attuned to joy, despite the hardships: I sought moments of serenity, celebration, and ritual in the shadows of perpetual grief. The photographs mark the passage of time as they document physical, emotional, and political limbo: they question what it means to long and to belong.

Iranian men stand along a canal running through a farmland in the district of Haji Abad on the outskirts of Borujerd, Iran on February 7, 2018. © Parisa Azadi
Ilam, the third largest Kurdish city in Iran, suffered heavily from the devastating eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s. The city was a constant target for the Iraqi bombing campaigns that left the city in ruins and destroyed much of its economic infrastructure. Today, Ilam remains economically underdeveloped with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. © Parisa Azadi
Nesa and her friend Yasaman look out the window in Tehran amid the coronavirus pandemic in Tehran, Iran on June 9, 2020. Like many young Iranians, Nesa and Yasaman are worried about their future as currency collapse, unemployment and inflation is making it harder for young Iranians to meet basic financial demands and is pushing many of them to seek a better life abroad. © Parisa Azadi
Kurdish man, Reza Alaeinezhad embraces his horse after teaching horse riding lessons in the city of Ilam, Iran on October 28, 2018. © Parisa Azadi
Women dance during a wedding ceremony in the village of Alamut, Iran on August 3, 2018. © Parisa Azadi
Hossain embraces his friend Negar on the streets of Tehran, Iran on October 13, 2017. © Parisa Azadi
© Parisa Azadi
An Iranian family rest on a rock in a mountainous area on the outskirts of Borujerd, Iran on February 9, 2018. © Parisa Azadi

Photographer: Parisa Azadi
Nationality: Canadian
Based in: Tehran, Iran & Dubai, UAE
Website: www.parisaphotography.com
Instagram: @parisa_images

Parisa Azadi is a Canadian visual journalist with a keen interest in history and conflict, memory and displacement.
Parisa has worked extensively in the Middle East, South Asia, Africa, and Canada. She has reported politically sensitive issues such as the Syrian refugee crisis in Jordan, missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada, the illegal practice of female genital mutilation in Uganda, and religious extremism in South Asia. Since 2018, Parisa has been working in the Middle East, examining the nuanced dynamics of communities living in the aftermath of political violence.
In 2023, Parisa was selected as the ‘Ones to Watch’ by the British Journal of Photography. She was awarded the Magnum Foundation Mobility Grant and selected for the South Asia Incubator Program. Parisa’s work has been presented in group and solo exhibitions across Europe and her work has been recognized by the World Press Photo 6×6 Global Talent Program. Parisa earned the Chris Hondros Fund Award (Eddie Adams Workshop, 2019) and a Women Photograph Emergency Fund grant (2020).
Her photographs have been published by The New York Times, The Guardian, Vogue, Associated Press, Courrier International, Annabelle Magazine, Malala Fund, International Rescue Committee, among others.