Hannah Darabi is an artist-researcher working with photography, video, found objects and printed ephemera to create new images of Iranian public life. Combining a rigorous research methodology with innovative photographic narratives, Darabi has established herself as a leading contemporary voice exploring Middle Eastern visual culture through a diasporic lens. Rather than treating the photographic image as a stable record, Darabi collages material from different eras and geographical locations to make palpable the ongoing reverberations of Iran’s past in the present. Much of her work uses visual culture to trace the shifting attitudes towards beauty standards, dress and gender expression across decades of political change in Iranian society.
Darabi was born in 1981 in Tehran, Iran and currently resides in Paris, France. She studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts in her native city before continuing her education at Université Paris 8 Vincennes–Saint-Denis. In 2022, Darabi was awarded the Bernd and Hilla Becher Award by the City of Düsseldorf for her entire artistic output and the Prix de la Photo Madame Figaro for her exhibition at the Rencontres d’Arles in 2023. In 2025, she was selected as the winner of the Prix Elysee, a prize that supports artistic creation in the field of photography, for her project Why Don’t You Dance? Her book Rue Enghelab: The Revolution Through Books, Iran 1979–1983 (Spector Books/Le Bal, 2019) has received several awards.
