Weekend Portfolio: Laurence Rasti
There Are No Homosexuals in Iran, 2014-2016, Laurence Rasti
Images and Text by Laurence Rasti
September 24, 2007 at Columbia University, former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, "In Iran, we do not have homosexuals like in your country. »
While today some Occidental countries accept gays and lesbians marriages, in Iran, homosexuality is still punishable by death. This sanction prohibits homosexuals to live their sexuality. Their only options are to choose transsexuality, practice tolerated by law but considered as pathological or to flee.
In Denizli, a city in Turkey, hundreds of gay refugees Iranian transit: they put their lives on pause waiting to join one day, a host country where they can freely live their sexualities. In this context of uncertainty where anonymity is the best protection, this work questions the fragile identity and gender concepts. It tries to give back to those people a face that their country has temporarily stolen.
Laurence Rasti was born in 1990 to Iranian parents in Switzerland. She obtained a Bachelor in Photography at ECAL – University of Art and Design Lausanne, in 2014, and a Master in Fine Arts at HEAD – Geneva University of Art and Design, in 2019. In her photographs she explores the concepts of identity and beauty. Relying on the dual quality of her cultural background, she looks at Swiss and Iranian cultural codes and conventions from a new angle in order to understand the influence of gender roles in society, but also the consequences of migration or the non-respect of fundamental rights.
In 2017 she published the book There Are No Homosexuals in Iran with the Edition Patrick Frey and got shortlisted at the Paris Photo Aperture First Photobook Award, the Author Book Award of the Rencontres d’Arles and nominated as one of the 10 best photobooks of 2017 by the New York Times Magazine.
Her work has been exhibited in various groups and solo exhibitions around the world, including ReGeneration3 at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Disruptive Perspectives at the Museum of Contemporary in Chicago, Iran Contemporary at the Fotohof Art Gallery in Austria, and different festivals like PhotoKatmandu, Athens Photo Festival or Tokyo International Photography Festival.
