When she was just 23 years old, Tahmineh Monzavi was imprisoned for her photography.
The Tehran-based photographer’s images of drug addicts and prostitutes in the poorer parts of her city were deemed “dangerous to society” by the Iranian regime. She spent a month in solitary confinement.
Her time in prison brought on panic attacks. “In addition, I got [an] autoimmune disease for the rest of my life,” she says from Tehran, “I lost my hair.”
She did not know how to treat the disease, and it began to attack her body. This was 2012, in the wake of the Arab Spring, when a wave of pro-democracy protests toppled dictators across the Middle East and North Africa. It was a highly sensitive and politically charged time in Iran.
Fast forward to the present day, and the political environment in Iran remains highly fraught.
Since the US and Israel started their war with Iran, there have been more than 3,000 deaths due to the bombardments. As with many modern wars, a large proportion of those deaths have been civilians.
Tehran says the war has caused around $270bn in damages, which equates to around 57 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.
Over the course of two days in January, an estimated 30,000 people were slaughtered by security forces in the street. Students made up a significant portion of the victims.
Monzavi, now 38, believes Generation Z Iranians – born between 1997 and 2012 – are braver than their millennial counterparts because they have support from their parents.
This generation has put aside the caution and fear that have haunted their predecessors, she says, “ They’ve learned how to be fearless.”
That fearlessness comes through when speaking to students and young people in Iran.
“Each day passing with these murderers in power is getting closer to more death and poverty,” says Hassan. He is a 20-year-old student, but Hassan is not his real name (all of the names of young people that we spoke to for this article have been changed for their safety).
“I wish people outside Iran understood that daily life is not only about politics or headlines. Even ordinary things like studying or planning a future have become difficult under constant uncertainty, economic pressure and fear,” Hassan says.
Monzavi has been turning her lens towards young people in Iran since the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement, which was sparked by 22-year-old Mahsa Amini’s death in police custody after she was arrested for failing to wear a hijab properly.
