Sarab by Nahid Rezashateri and Gianluca Ceccarini

The Iranian landscape consists mostly of a vast desert territory.

As for the Inuit who have so many words to indicate the snow so the iranians use different terms for the various types of desert: Kavir, Sahra, Biaban, Dasht kavir. Along the roads that cross the desert areas it is customary to see in the distance those that the Iranians call sarab: the mirages. During our long journey in the iranian hinterland we have thought about the recent history of the Persian people, their continuous and complex work in search of their own identity and how often everything can seem illusory to them just like a sarab in the desert. A millenarian culture, rich and refined, formed on a vast desert territory crossed by large commercial caravan routes. A complex and multi-faceted contemporary society, saturated with contrasts, where tradition and modernity coexist wrapped up painfully. It is often to the great Persian Zoroastrian before the Arab occupation that the iranians turn in their continuous search for origins and identity, a distant and evanescent period like a sarab in the desert.

SARAB is a collective created in 2018 by Nahid Rezashateri and Gianluca Ceccarini that deals with photographic projects, visual anthropology, self publishing, video art and graphic design, with a particular interest in projects that tell of identity, memory and landscape as a cultural process. [Official Website][Fanzines & PhotoBooks]