Q&A With Toronto Based Photographer E. Hashemi

We are excited to be part of this years 25th edition Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival.

As this year our photography exhibition is virtual, Arta Gallery director/curator Fay Athari and the Arta Team has curated a series of artist Q&A to introduce all amazing photographers that are part of our "Time Lost" exhibition.

We are happy to introduce  E. Heshemi's participating in our 2021 Contact Exhibition "Time Lost", Heshemi's work explored her experience as an immigrant unpacking the subtlety of the world around her.

Artist Statement: 

"She blooms and grows green amid all the thorns that nature brings to her...."This collection is called "Triptych Series" and consists of 20 frames.

Questionnaire: 

1. Why did you choose to pursue a career as a photographer? Every single day, there are many things that happen in the world and no one knows what is going to occur. I have always loved to freeze these moments and show everyone what has happened because the image world is totally different. Because what has happened in an image, cannot happen in another way. This pleasure and enthusiasm of freezing the moments I love and creating the world that I desire was one of the most significant reasons that I pursued my career as a photographer.
2.  What is your favorite subject to photograph? Life, and mostly, my own life and how everything that I am surrounded with has an influence on it. What concerns me in my photographs is concepts and stories behind everything that happens. Everything that happens in life has a reason and there is a message behind it; so, I try my best to portray what I experience, feel and see and share them through my photographs.
3. What makes a good picture stand out from the average? As a conceptual photographer, I admire works that are being created from realities in life. To me, quality is important but what makes an image stand out is how the photographer has shown real life and how s/he wants their audience to feel the beauty, the sweetness or the bitterness of things happening in life and makes them be better people and experience more.
4. Whose work has influenced you most?  I have always admired great works by photographers like Harry Callahan, Diana Arbus, Ralph Gibson, Man Ray, Cindy Sherman, and have been influenced by how Susan Sontag has tried to interpret photography and photographers’ world through her books and lectures.
5. What type of cameras do you shoot with? I mostly use my Canon 5D II, and Sony Alpha 7000 to take pictures.
6. What kind of tools do you use for post-processing? I try to do some editing on Photoshop and recently, I have been doing some Calligraphy on my printed pictures.
7. What is the most rewarding part of being a photographer for you? Photography discloses what people might ignore or pass without paying attention to. People see themselves in the photographs as they have never seen themselves. Moreover, photography is imprisoning reality and by taking pictures, we participate in other people’s mortality, vulnerability and mutability. What I do as a photographer is slicing out a moment and freezing it, and this is the most rewarding part of it.