Afro-Iran: The Unknown Minority
Mahdi Ehsaei is a German-Iranian photographer and designer based in Germany who is running a Kickstarter campaign to support the publication of his book Afro-Iran: The Unknown Minority. This book will feature what he states, “is a side of Iran, which is widely unknown even to Iranians: a minority of people who influenced the culture of a whole region by continuing their African heritage with their clothing style, their music, their dance and their oral traditions and rituals.”
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According to Ehsaei he,
“set out to the Hormozgan Province in the Persian Gulf to shed some light on this part of Iran, which is home to the descendants of enslaved people and traders from Africa. The traditional and historical region with one of Iran’s most ethnically diverse populations is framed with unique landscapes. The photo book shows fascinating portraits which are not typical for the common picture of Iran. ‘Afro-Iran’ reveals details documenting a centuries-long history of a community, which is often overlooked in Iran’s history, but which has even shaped the culture in Southern Iran.”
The inspiration for this project for Ehsaei comes from the Russian-Iranian photographer Antoin Sevruguin.
“He was one of the first photographers and only artists who captured the demographic and ethnic groups which lived in Iran, and visually documented the diverse population of Iran for the first time. Sevruguin decided to create his own survey of the people, landscape, and architecture of Iran. Sevruguin’s work shows how much potential ethnographical photography can have in order to understand a population better, even after more than 100 years. That was the moment when I decided to work on the topic of Afro-Iranians. My inspiration strengthened me more to document the widely unknown minority. A photo series which shows a firsthand account of the current presence of the often overlooked Afro-Iranians for the first time.”
Support the KickStarter campaign and help Mahdi Ensaei publish this important book: