Shirin neshat photography biography

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian photographer and filmmaker whose work focuses on the contrasts between Islam and the West, femininity and masculinity, public life and private life, tradition and modernity, and bridging the gaps between these subjects. Neshat was the fourth of five children born to wealthy parents, raised in the religious city of Qazvin in northwest Iran, in a "very warm, supportive Muslim family environment," where she learned traditional religious values through her maternal grandparents.

Her father was a doctor and her mother was a homemaker. Neshat has stated that her father "fantasized about the West, romanticized the West, and slowly rejected all his own values; both parents did. I think what happened is their identity slowly dissolved, they traded it for comfort.

Shirin neshat son

Through her father's adoption of Western ideologies came an acceptance of Western feminism. Her father encouraged each of his daughters to "be an individual, take risks, learn, see the world," and sent his daughters, as well as his sons, to college for higher education. She completed her degree at the University of California, Berkeley in She soon moved to New York, where she quickly realized that the profession she had studied for was not connected to creating art.

After meeting her future husband, who managed the Storefront for Art and Architecture - an alternative space in Manhattan - she dedicated 10 years of her life to working with him at the "storefront," which became the place where her true education began. During this time, she did not make any serious attempts at creating art, and the few small attempts she made were later destroyed.