Gohar Dashti is part of a new wave, a storyteller of social and cultural issues. Her practice explores people – their private selves and public lives – in her native Iran. Unsurprisingly, growing up in the rich, complex and rigorous culture of Iran, not to mention its turbulent recent past, has had a major effect on Dashti’s practice and development as an artist. Her photographs reveal the scars of her generation’s war torn childhood and confront issues of gender, secularism and religious tradition in contemporary Iran. In the series ‘Today’s Life and War’ Dashti questions how the violence of  war symbolically impacts  the life and collective memory of her generation. There is a distinctly cinematic feel as they are staged with the elaborate attention to detail of a fashion or lifestyle magazine shoot. The images in this series combine mundane moments of a young couple’s life, such as a meal or watching television, with locations and props better suited to armed conflict. In Me She and Others Dashti illuminates the complexity of life for the contemporary Iranian woman through a series of portraits depicting the presentation of self in everyday life.  The photos represent three situations (from left to right): the workplace; indoors and in society.