Ashkan Sahihi
Agent: Ivy Bernhard
Author: Tracy Ann Essoglou
A freelance photographer, Ashkan Sahihi’s work focuses exclusively on portraiture and narrative photojournalism. Born in Tehran, Iran in 1963, he spent his youth and early adulthood in West Germany. Overwhelmed by the preponderance of writers in his family, Ashkan saw photography as an opportunity to describe and tell stories in a different way, using a different language; not Farsi, his first language, and not German, his first adopted language. Photography presented itself as a new medium; one that was both accessible and international.
Photographing rock and pop music figures, success with his first subjects led to more intimate assignments with authors. As a professional photographer, Sahihi worked exclusively for SURHKAMP, one of Germany’s most renown publishing houses. During this period Sahihi’s work appeared in Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung, Frankfurter Rundschau, Tempo, Mid, Auftritt.
The move to the United States in 1987 grew out of both a professional desire for new and more challenging opportunities and a need for change in cultural landscape. Photographing for Zeit-Magazin, Sueddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, Stern, Der Spiegel,, in Germany and Vanity Fair, Spin, Entertainment Weekly, Mademoiselle, here in the U.S., Sahihi has again concentrated on portraiture and narrative photojournalism, while dramatically expanding the range of cultural personalities.
Most recently, Fromm International published Pictures and Their Stories. This collection of Sahihi’s work features fifty known and lesser-known cultural figures. Each portrait is supplemented by additional photographs from the shooting sessions and more strikingly, by narrative passages written by the photographer about his personal encounters with each subject. Pictures and Their Stories is currently being reviewed by several popular and trade magazines. His textual commentaries have elicited much interest resulting in several written assignments, which are soon to be published.
TAE: NYC