Photographs: Hannah Darabi
Text: Hannah Darabi
Publisher: Self-published
40 pages
Hardcover, 290 x 190 mm. First edition, 2012. Text in french and in persian. Edition limited to 30 numbered and signed copies. In great condition.
Unreal City book – a handmade artist book – is an object related to the pricipal idea of the photographic series. It’s specail binding with the thick gray cardboard reminding us of concrete stone, is in harmony of what we are about to see in the pictures. The choice of leaving the book without any cover, or spine creates an unfinished form. The text on the front is in french, and on the back, in persian, which makes the book readable in both sides.
Unreal City Book exists in numerous public and private collections, in particular the Bibliothèque Kandinsky (Centre Pompidou, Paris) and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, (Paris). It was also selected as « Best Photobook of 2010s by young photographers » of the japanese photo magazine, IMA.
"Unreal City' is a series of photographs of construction projects in three different countries (Iran, France, and the United States). Having grown up in Tehran, I was looking in abroad for an opportunity to reactivate the imaginary associated with this city: a construction site.
Playing a contradictory role in the urban scene, the sites contain both signs of construction and ruin, a silent off-field of the city, something that is hidden, as it is usually hidden in the theater, the change of scenery. These perpetual construction-ruins metaphorically represent the traces of the war in the urban area (starting with the Iran-Iraq war), as well as the economic crisis of a country in search of a new identity." (Hannah DARABI)
Hannah Darabi has received the 2019 Photography Catalogue of the Year award for “Enghelab Street : A Revolution through Books: Iran 1979–1983”, published by Spector Books and LE BAL