Ingress: a Photopoetry Exhibition

Ingress brings together street photography from Iran and translations of classical Persian poetry in a layered encounter between image and verse, tracing women’s embodiment across public space and literary memory.

Sasan N. Chegini has photographed women in public spaces before and after the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising in 2022. Woman, Life, Freedom is one of the most significant women-led civil rights movements in Iran’s recent history. It was sparked by the death of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, a young Iranian woman, in morality police custody following an alleged hijab violation.

While formal systems of control remain in place, with no meaningful reforms to civil and human rights, Chegini’s photographs from before and after the uprising reveal a transformed cityscape. Women move through streets, sidewalks, and crowded public spaces, going about their lives. Yet under surveillance and state pressure, these ordinary acts of presence carry a different weight.

In Iran, where the camera has been used to criminalize women, these photographs are anything but ordinary street images. Made under risk, they carry the urgency of their conditions, turning everyday moments into acts of presence and witness. Describing his process, Chegini writes, “I walk, draw close to people, raise the camera for the briefest moment possible, and release the shutter. Usually, the photograph is ready before I am able to compose my thoughts.”

In Iranian culture, poetry holds a central place, with classical verse living in cultural memory, rituals, and everyday speech. Drawing on this living tradition, the exhibition’s curator, Maryam Ala Amjadi, has placed Chegini’s photographs alongside verses she has selected and translated from a millennium of Persian literature that invoke the female body. Together, image and poem deepen the idea of the body as a site of encounter, struggle, and desire within Iranian cultural memory and lived experience.