Interview with Alborz Teymoorzadeh

Alborz Teymoorzadeh Born in 1987 in a northern city of Iran. He graduated as B.A. of Architecture in 2011 and upon his background in art,

like painting, drawing, graphic designing, sculpture and photography he started his career in portrait, fashion, and theater photography. He founded “Rosso Photography” in 2011 as his representative brand.

Alborz Teymoorzadeh | Photo: Zavosh Laghaei

ZH: Hi Alborz, could you tell us about yourself and how you got started in photography?
Alborz: If I want to tell the whole story, probably It would be a long one, so I will make it short. I was born in a northern city of Iran “Babol”. At the age of 7, I started some painting classes under the supervision of Mr.Rahim Moulaeian which is my mentor until now. At the age of 10, I started some experiences in music. After 6 years of playing “Santoor” under the supervision of Ms.Niloofar Rouhi, I found out all of these attempts to enter the world of art which was always accompanied and supported by my family must have a reason. So at the age 16, I started thinking about studying Architecture at university, and it came true at the age of 18, in 2005.

At the first days of architecture school, I started shooting photos with my compact camera along with other experiencing in graphic designing, illustration, drawing, painting, and sculpture, which I found photography much more connected to my soul. Studying Architecture gave me a different vision from what I had about life and the reason that I came to this world, which is being a photographer and make changes and create purity.

ZH: How would you describe your photographic style?
Alborz: I can not talk about style because every style needs a plan and every plan needs thoughts. Thinking about what you want to do maybe sometimes come to a fantastic result, but using your conscious in photography, in my opinion, will kill purity of the soul of the subject. I just trust my subconscious in any field of photography like theater, fashion, portrait, architecture etc. When I start shooting, I let it go and float in it. It is a vacuum space for me. It is like absolute silence. There is a powerful stream in me and I trust it and I let it lead.

ZH: Did you have any formal training in photography?
Alborz: No, I did not have any training at all and everything I have now is a result of self-training, like reading books and taking pictures over and over. I have my own photography school in my mind and it is the best one in my opinion.

ZH: How did you get into Theater Photography?
Alborz: I think it was 3 years ago which I shot theater photos for the first time and I got a really good result, but it was not enough for me. I thought there must be something else in it, there must be something further than just freezing the moments. So I started to think and read about theater and the happenings and incidents on the stage. I found out the theater photography that is common in Iran is just another form of reportage of what happening on stage like the other reportage photos which we see every day in newspapers. I found out theater photography has another part which no one until now has discovered, a part which so difficult and it is so deferent from just choosing the right angle and I understood that I am the only one who discovered it, so I let my new discovered stream take the lead, which for the first time it came to some multi-exposure photos of a monologue named “Hashare” by Mr.Mehdi Sagha and after that it became more mature when I shot Miss.Laleh Alavi’s performance “Hamin dor o bar”.

“Va donya ham az yek pich motevalled shod” Theater | Photo by Alborz Teymoorzadeh

“Hashare” Theater | Photo by Alborz Teymoorzadeh

“Matarsag ” Theater | Photo by Alborz Teymoorzadeh

ZH: What is the relation between Theater photography and Fashion Photography?
Alborz: There are similarities and differences between this tow. In theater photography I try to tell the story with another media which is photography, I try to express the moments through the aperture of my mind and feelings, which is the part of theater photography I told I have discovered, and I call it “Narrative theater photography”.
On the other hand in fashion photography, there is the story telling process too, with this difference that photographer must consider the product. It is about the product. You should affect the desirability of product through the gate of your audiences. These are tow different point of view with the same mind and the same feeling of the photographer.
It maybe seems confusing to have tow different result with one methodology but it is a dialectic contradiction and if you want to make difference you have to be different, and if you want to be different you should think different.

ZH: In theater, the custom designers and makeup artists are out of your duties, You just have to find the right angle and image scene in irrigation. But what about fashion photography? Are you in control of custom designs and makeup?
Alborz: As I told it is not right that I just have to find the right angle, which is a way that every theater photographers in Iran are wrongly using to just freeze the moments. In fashion photography as I told too, it is important to show the product as it is and it is designer’s duty to prepare the costume but I absolutely can control the makeup, and by controlling I mean, I do not let the makeup artist make so many changes, and I prefer to use a model close to my standards, so I do not have to make so many changes with makeup.
In some projects photographer and makeup artist work like two different artists together. In this situation, there are so many differences, because photography and makeup have the same roll in expressing the artwork, and they should not in control of each other. They should work together and solve together and make the masterpiece come true.

Photo by Alborz Teymoorzadeh | Model S. Sadeghi

Photo by Alborz Teymoorzadeh | Model S.Sheikhian

Photo by Alborz Teymoorzadeh | Model S.Mohammadi

Photo by Alborz Teymoorzadeh | Model S.Doagouyan

ZH: What are the most difficult aspects of professional fashion photography?
Alborz: If you want to know the difficult aspects of something, you should first investigate basic elements of it. In Iran there is two kind of fashion designers, the first group is designing the product like the other fashion designers in other parts of the world, and the second group is just copying. The problem is the first group which is the real designers are afraid of photographing of their designs because they will be copied in a flash of light by the second group because we do not have copyright law in Iran. All these mean, that photographers do not have contact with real designers. When you do not have contact with a real designer you do not have the theoretical basis of design process either, and if you do not have the fundamental material of something, how can you imagine to earn successful result?
It is so painful and difficult to see, that you and every other are trying to do their best, but still, there are too many distances between what it is and what it should be. And on the other hand fashion photography in Iran feels the lack of another fundamental material; unavailability of the city landscape and public spaces.
Fashion comes from the society and reasonably photos of a fashion design could not be isolated from society.

ZH: Where do you get your Creative inspiration?

Alborz: It seems every artist knowingly or unknowingly get his/her inspiration from society. But in my opinion, the main source is Identity. It consists of many things، like the neighborhood you have grown up in, your beloved and hated people around you from childhood until now, your parent’s behavior, and every single detail of your life. All of these make your identity. Your feels, the need to express, the way you choose to express yourself, the details which you choose to consider, consciously or unconsciously, the films you watch, animations, books, music, and especially music, all of them are constitutive of an artist’s creative inspiration. But for me, music is the most visionary inspirational material which makes me fly in my dreams. It is like freedom. It is like in some moments you are far from the world, without any load, without any judgment, and without any response to take.

ZH: What type of cameras do you shoot with?

Alborz: In 2005 I started with a compact camera, Panasonic FZ5. I tried to shoot every subject I could. It was more like playing and discovering a new area of my life. After 5 years I really wanted to have an SLR camera but I did not have the money at that moment, and suddenly out of nowhere one of my father’s friend who has seen my photos, gave his SLR camera, Minolta Dynax 500si, to me. I can bravely say that one year which I shoot with this analog camera was the most important period of my life. After that one year, in 2011 I bought a prosumer DSLR camera, Nikon D7000. I worked one year with this one, but the professional world needed something much more powerful than a prosumer camera, and in 2012 I changed to a full frame camera, and until this moment،, in addition, to shooting with my analog camera, I shoot with my beloved child, Nikon D800.

In collaboration by ZH media