In images from the collection of Azita Bina and Elmar Seibel, these two photographers of different generations share a rich history—as Iranians, as teacher and student, and as artists with deep knowledge of documentary photography. The featured works reveal that the artists also shared a strategy: incorporating surreal, fictive elements powered by their imaginations into their work, as a response to the political, social, and cultural changes they witnessed.

Untitled, from the Home series, Gohar Dashti, 2017. © 2020 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Jalali is well known for his pioneering photographs of war and revolution and his dedication to preserving Iran’s photographic history, and his legacy also endures through his work as a teacher. He mentored Dashti in the early 2000s, while he was creating the Image of Imagination series, featured in this exhibition. Produced from the layering of historical photographs of Iranian people and places, these visual juxtapositions pose questions about Iran’s cultural history, especially its archetypes of men and women. Also on view is Dashti’s Home series, made in 2017, which uses abandoned buildings in the Iranian city of Mashhad as backdrops for staged natural landscapes. Home documents contemporary experience while blurring the boundary between reality and fiction, presenting the artist’s musings on belonging, displacement, and refuge.