The architectural landscapes staged in Majid Koorang Beheshti’s photographs, with their variable angles and perspectives, translate into a dynamic storytelling of the artist’s preoccupations. With his monochromatic urban environments, Beheshti bemoans the progressive destruction of Iran and the loss of its heritage during the successive regime changes and conflicts of the country’s modern period.

  

 Reminiscent of Bauhaus, the clean lines composing orderly series of angular or curved edifices, bring to life a grayscale geometrical abstraction. Stripped of their primary role, the structures become mere settings for the ghostly characters that Beheshti sometimes inserts into his images. In doing so, he offers an intimate, almost forbidden glimpse of what’s happening inside and around the buildings he captures. Death, fear, isolation, and military presence are the subjects of his politically engaged narrative, veiled by sprawling cityscapes.

  

 Born in 1967 in Isfahan, Iran, Majid Koorang Beheshti received a Bachelor of Arts in Painting from Tehran’s Azad University. He has shown in solo exhibitions throughout Iran since 1998 and at Ayyam Gallery Al Quoz, Dubai in 2012. Beheshti has participated in exhibitions in Iran, the United States, Italy, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany since 2004, most notably with the exhibition Persian Visions, Contemporary Photography from Iran that toured the United States. At the 10th Iranian Photography Biennial in 2006, he was awarded first prize in creative photography for his series Cubic Pathways.