Tehran Project
Between 2005 and 2007 Afshin Dehkordi created an art space in a working class neighbourhood of South Tehran for twelve local children. The young teenagers were working children, the boys working as labourers and in sweat shops, the girls running the house and acting as surrogate mothers for their younger siblings while the parents worked.
The children were given cameras and group meetings were held once a week in a bare room, in the sweltering heat of Tehran’s summer and its sub-freezing winters. Despite, or perhaps because, of no previous exposure to art or photography the children flourished, photographing the people and places that inhabit their daily lives. Each week the group would go over the material shot the previous week, learning to share their opinions, to give positive feedback to each other, to support each other, to explore new photographic territories, to see their lives and themselves in a new light. As Melika, 15, quietly remarked after one of the group sessions, “Now I know what I want to be , I want to be a photographer”
A forthcoming book and touring exhibition will bring their world to an entirely new audience.