Shahin Shahablou

Shahablou died of COVID-19, aged 56, on 15 April 2020.

He was raised in Tehran. His love of photography led to a bachelor’s and then a master’s degree in the subject from the University of Tehran. For the last two years of his undergraduate course worked for the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organisation , photographing heritage sites while managing the organisation’s darkroom. He taught photography, enjoyed solo exhibitions in Iran and India. He became a photojournalist at the new Azad newspaper, a pro-reformist publication that appeared in the comparatively liberal years of Mohammad Khatami’s presidency and became a photojournalist and a board member of the Iranian Photojournalists Association.

In 2011 he fled Iran for Britain, where he hoped for a freer, less restricted life. There he gained refugee status and was known for capturing LGBT subjects. He also worked as a photographer for Amnesty International. and for events for Cooltan Arts. Alongside photography, Shahablou worked in a supermarket.

He was homosexual and a gay rights activist. Growing social repression after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took power in 2005 led to Shahin imprisoned as a political prisoner for being a member of a dissident group

When Azad was closed down in 2001, after it published a caricature of an ayatollah, Shahin took trips to India and Afghanistan in search of documentary subject matter, resulting in critically successful solo exhibitions in Delhi and Tehran. He continued teaching, and returned to Tehran University of Art to complete an MA in photography in 2006.

Shahin Shahablou (27 January 1964 – 15 April 2020) was an Iranian photographer.