Award-winning photographer Farzad Ariannejad fled his homeland, Iran, in search of freedom and safety, and his photographs can now be seen at the Stedelijk Museum Zutphen in the Netherlands. The exhibition Stories of Freedom is a collaboration between the Stedelijk Museum Zutphen and the Buddy to Buddy foundation. “What does freedom mean to you?” is the central question of the exhibition, which opened on July 18th, 2020.
Ariannejad’s work focuses on the lives of people, especially women, in Iran. The photographs cover the people of Iran as well as the curtailing of women’s rights and the limiting of their activities. One of the photographs features a woman in a black hijab with her back to the viewer, in front of a shop window full of dolls in white veils. “For me, freedom is living the way you want, in which no one limits you or decides for you how you should live,” Ariannejad explains through interpreter and museum volunteer Darya Pourtavakol. He did not experience that freedom in Iran. “I got in trouble there by taking my pictures. I was arrested there by the regime.”
Ariannejad fled with his wife from Iran and now lives in the Netherlands. Through friends, he discovered the Buddy to Buddy foundation, which helps to relieve isolation among refugees by linking them to people in the area. There he met Merel Hubatka, project leader at the foundation, as well as a city poet and author who was considering a new exhibition at the time.
Farzad Ariannejad has worked as a volunteer with the Pasargad Heritage Foundation and WCHV since 2010. He has been practicing photography and working as a social documentary photographer since 1997.
Ariannejad has won several international awards including the Asahi Shimbun gold medal at the 78 th International Photographic Salon of Japan in 2018, a bronze award at the PX3 in France in 2018, 1st place at the Monochrome Photography Awards in England in 2017, and the Photographer of the Year award from the Pasargad Heritage Foundation in 2011 for his photographs of Iran’s natural heritage sites. He has shown his works at many exhibitions around the world including in the Netherlands, Venice, Los Angeles, and at the University of Maryland in 2009.