Iranian photographer Zahra Yazdani presents a new body of work in her exhibition Scripted Selves: Sutures of Signs and Symbols, curated by Manan Shah at Latitude 28 Gallery, New Delhi. Through the measured exposure of limbs, torsos, and morphing bodies, she treats the photograph through the overarching narrative of how light travels and is captured through an analogue camera. Yazdani’s images of performing bodies arrive at gestures and aesthetic explorations that hint at the erotic, the abject, and the uncomfortable.

Yazdani’s encounters stage a carefully constructed language of illumination, shadows, and darkness. In conversation with STIR, the artist discusses her experimentation with a large format camera, referring to the frame as “a kind of canvas”, as she acquaints herself with the format for the first time. Using double exposure as an experimental method to construct an image, Yazdani manipulates analogue techniques in a traditional darkroom setup. Yazdani says, “I was curious about the old concept of the camera, as raw as it is. In its most basic form, cameras have one hole, through which rays of light enter, and slowly images are created [...] It wasn’t just about the technique but about the darkroom. It was a process of cut-and-paste while I was printing them in the dark room. The light had to be cut in certain parts, and where there is a double exposure, there can be tonal variation, so you can choose to cut the light.”

The manipulation of figures through this technique creates shapes, visions, and motions, producing chimeric beings, often without faces. The figures take centre stage, naked and emoting exaggerated imagery concerning their forms, seemingly creating an encounter with the erotic through the skin as a surface, extending to the rawness of flesh and the mutative capacity of the human body. In her photo The Surgery Room, Yazdani constructs an operating room with surgical tools and a table, assembling the evidence of an incision. The artist refers to the introduction of the “surgical gaze” that she was “excavating” through this series, revealing a conjured atmosphere of vulnerability. Portraits of surgical tools in the exhibition seem to capture the macabre, with a suggestion of the grotesque through the picturing of invasive instruments. They also seem to gesture towards the skin as an expanse, a barrier between air and blood. In two of the photographs in The Surgery Room chapter, Yazdani, too, is pictured with her camera, seen as a reflection in the mirror, alongside the performer who sensually reclines on the operating table. The artist-photographer is, thus identified and the wall between the staged subjects and the literal reality of the medium breaks down, subverting traditional biases and perceptions of experiencing and engaging with photography.

The surgery room can be read as an allegory for the gaze of the photographer as she pierces, cuts, stitches, and disembowels. In conversation with STIR, Yazdani talks about the process of staging the photographs and the twisted, temporal configurations she directs, “The figures are as if there is one body, but it is transformed and alienated from the regular body that we see.” We see these faceless, limbed figures on fabric prints hanging from the ceiling in the exhibition, almost like a trapeze artist, where the body is in a state of intensified contortion and performance. The bodies can be seen as grotesque in their twisted, headless, naked, forms, sinewy and precariously balanced.

The series The Black Room is a reference to the camera itself, as Yazdani tells STIR. She describes the camera as a sealed black compartment, where narrow rays of light enter into a space of gestation. In The Black Room, Yazdani photographs performers in an intimate darkened space, with a controlled use of artificial light to create the scene. The result is isolating and somewhat claustrophobic as the bodies appear torn, writhing and contorting. The artist tells STIR, “What fascinates me about the body is that it has a language by itself, you can feel it through the act of the body, the gestures and body language of people. For me, the body has a very expressive language within it.”

In The Pink Elephant chapter, the photographs appear softer, with bodies attuned to domestic space, displaying contortions and floating in space as object-like forms. Playing with the body as material and manifestation of the psyche, Yazdani explores the figurative form as a site of excavation, evoking the feral and the tamed. Many of the bodies that the artist presents are in a state of falling. Limbs are intertwined, straining, and sideways, bodies lumpy and pulled down by gravity.

Scripted Selves: Sutures of Signs and Symbols will be on view from January 24 - February 29 2024 at Latitude 28.