Cities 12 Thirsty Iran by Yalda Moaiery
Forgive her, forgive her if, at times, she forgets her harrowing connection with murky waters and empty cavities and foolishly deludes herself that she has the right to exist. Forugh Farrokhzad
Yalda Moaiery is a precious woman. Her being a woman in Iran today is precious. And it is precious to be a witness of the epochal passage that the country is experiencing thanks to women.
For us, women and men of the West, that freedom and democracy are too often taken for granted, It is fundamental the gaze that with his work Moaiery allows us to throw on the controversial reality but saturated with ferment of a people that tries to painfully and laboriously bring back its country to that Democracy that has marked its glorious past!
The photos that make up this work tell how the life of women is condemned in Iran not only by religious fanaticism, as Moaiery defines it, but also by environmental and social conditions. "From about twenty years ago, - says the Iranian photographer and activist - until the construction of the Karkheh and Karun dams, the plan to transfer water to the central plateau of Iran caused a shortage of water resources in the southern areas of Khuzestan province. These measures caused a huge drought in this region. After that, the wetland of Hur al-Azim, the main artery of life in this area, dried up. This drought, in addition to the severe economic and environmental effects it has left, has had many social effects. The lack of water and economic problems have, in fact, forced girls to abandon school, and to marry quickly and early, has reduced their social life to nothing, and above all has stubbornly pushed them to experience motherhood earlier and, consequently, to suffer from premature aging. As a female photographer, women's living conditions have always been important to me, and with this work I have tried to show some of these problems from the point of view of those who pay the very high price only and only on their skin: girls, mothers and grandmothers. "
BIO
Yalda Moaiery is an Iranian photojournalist well known for war, protest, natural disaster, and conflict photographs. During the Mahsa Amini protests in 2022 she was one of around twenty journalists arrested in Iran. She is a member of the Iranian Photojournalists Association (IPJA).
Throughout her career, Moaiery has documented wars, conflicts and natural disasters in parts of the world including Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon. Her photographs have been featured in international magazines and newspapers, such as Time, Newsweek, San Francisco Chronicle, Le Monde and El Pais.
Moaiery’s 20-year career has taken her around the world but her work also focuses on life in Iran, including mass protests in 2019 over rising fuel prices. Her portfolio includes photo essays on women serving in the Iranian military and the legacy of Iran’s Supreme Leader Khomeini.
In 2019, she gained notoriety when she spoke out against President Donald Trump after he used one of her photos on instagram to attack the Iranian government.
