Edition 2023

2022 curatorial research grant winners

Between Our Walls

Tehran, Iran 1956-2014

Between Our Walls–Tehran, Iran 1956-2014 is a photo-based research project curated by Sogol & Joubeen Studio. It narrates the story of a house in the northern part of the rapidly developing Tehran, Iran, in the late 1950s, built by a middle-class family member, an employee of the National Iranian Oil Company. His family resided many years in that house before they left Iran after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. They abandoned the house and all its objects in hopes of returning one day, a homecoming that never came through.

The core of this research project is a dialogue between architecture, interior design, domestic objects, publications, correspondence and the photo archive left by the family. Most things left were saved before the destruction of the house in 2014. That house symbolized the course of modernization and the radical changes in the Iranian lifestyle in the 1950s and 1960s, a transformation that still resonates today.

This project shows Iranian viewers a glimpse of the lifestyle which hardly exists in the face of the developments of the Islamic revolution. To the global viewer, it would present a detailed and astonishing narrative of outside influences in the modernization of a traditional society.

Curators: Sogol & Joubeen Studio.

Winners of the 2022 Rencontres d’Arles curatorial research fellowship. 

The Rencontres d’Arles curatorial research fellowship receives the generous support from Jean-François Dubos.

  • Institutional partners

    • République Française
    • Région Provence Alpes Côté d'Azur
    • Département des Bouches du Rhône
    • Arles
    • Le Centre des monuments nationaux est heureux de soutenir les Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles en accueillant des expositions dans l’abbaye de Montmajour
  • Main partners

    • Fondation LUMA
    • BMW
    • SNCF
    • Kering
  • Media partners

    • Arte
    • Lci
    • Konbini
    • Le Point
    • Madame Figaro
    • France Culture