Siavash Eydani

Siavash Eydani's expansive landscape images serve as an ode to the pristine, yet overwhelming mountain ranges that dominate major parts of the Iranian natural landscape.

With mountains as the backdrop to his youth, Eydani was always drawn to the familiar and overwhelmingly majestic rocky terrain. As a young child, he would fanatically engage in climbing, along with his father or friends. When he witnessed a friend lose his grip and fall to his death, Eydani was shaken by the intimate reminder of nature’s staggering power, and the futility in the efforts of those who think they can exercise control over it.

Commuting for his photographic work in the city of Tehran, Edyani also observed the effect the environment could have on the way people think and act. While the natural landscape enhances compassionate and empathetic thinking, the city and its abundance of stimuli lead to a numbing of the mind, and an egocentric state.

In the eyes of Eydani, physical and mental proximity to nature also encourage a way of thinking that is close to a truthful experience of reality. It is precisely this truth, which measures itself so tightly in the contours of the landscape, that Eydani captures in his series.

The work of Siavash Eydani is part of the group exhibition Space to Breathe, curated by Newsha Tavakolian and on display in the Grote Kerk Breda.