A Rare Intimate Glimpse Into Private Lives in Iran

03-15-2014 • http://www.wired.com, By Doug Bierend

ranian Living Rooms by photographer Enrico Bossan tries to close that distance. It’s a book of photographs taken in the domestic havens where Iranians, very much like the wider Western world, indulge in drink, smoking, sex and radical ideas. It’s where they express the casual lifestyles that thrive despite the preferences of Iran’s government.

To get a glimpse behind the official party lines, Bossan decided against taking the photos himself. Instead, he asked 15 young photographers already living in the country to document the Iran they know better than anyone.

“Not many [outsiders] know,” says Bossan, “because unless you are going to be traveling inside the country — say you have a friend and you have the possibility to go to a dinner with some Iranians in a private house — you will see another kind of country. I don’t like to invite someone to shoot a world they don’t know. I believe that it’s better that somebody shoot or tell a story about what they know.”