India Mahdavi

We were very moved when we met India, the French architect and designer with Iranian-Egyptian roots.

This Portraits de Villes was to be a very personal project for her; the photographs in the book were born of her many trips to Teheran to see her mother and family, between 2013 and 2017.

The city of her birth, and Iran in general, have always been a great source of inspiration for India. We can see her love of color juxtaposition, and the compositions that feign imbalance.

Mixed within are memories, places and objects reignited by the eye of someone who is re-discovering their roots after a lifetime’s absence. “I abandoned Iran when I was 18 months old, an age at which we don’t yet have any memories. I use the word ‘abandoned’ consciously as the notion of abandonment suits Teheran so well.

When I ‘rediscovered this city that I had never really known, the sweet melancholy of that feeling was what touched me first – it was as if things had been fixed in time and I heard the echo of a world that no longer existed, but that lives on in the cracks of a city that is still a work in progress.” 

Clémentine Larroumet