Photography published in The New York Times · Los Angeles Times · Hyperallergic · The Panafold · No Tokens Journal
His multidisciplinary practice—shaped by poetry, cooking, music, and visual arts—took a decisive turn after embracing sobriety in 2015.
The final two days of the artist's grandfather's life. Opa dies before the film ends.
The film is not screening online. Programmers and festivals are welcome to request a link.
After 2015, the practice began again here — the camera slowed down first.
A series of ten short films, in production. Individual films will be posted here as they are finished.
Oil stick, acrylic, and unconventional materials — saffron, black dried lime, pomegranate, sabzi, sand, and fire — applied directly to mass-produced Persian-style rugs. Repurposed as both medium and critique, the rugs interrogate the consumer fetishization of orientalized objects while evoking migration, displacement, and third-culture hybridity.
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← back to all worksPersonal reportage on diaspora, belonging, and autochthony — grown out of street photography.
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Persian cuisine in an "Under The Tuscan Sun" kitchen; the Food Network is blasting Emeril Live, as my mom teaches me about the Iranian palette where, here, butter and fenugreek are trellised by pink and black peppercorn as a treacly backbone is endowed by oud and ambergris. The room spins. Gourmand would be the lazy way to describe this savory, unctuous tandem of memory and opulence.
The perfumes are composed to evoke the dishes of that kitchen — gheimeh and beef rendang among them — and they accompany the rug paintings as an invisible part of the work.
Features, artist profiles, interviews, and criticism, mostly about people who make things in Los Angeles. The poems have their own room.
Longer work, fiction and a feature screenplay, is in development.
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Editorial and portrait photography on assignment, for publications and for people.
view photographsPhotographic documentation of paintings and works on paper, for artists, galleries, and estates.
the serviceLive poems typed to order for holiday parties, brand activations, weddings, and conferences. Each guest leaves with the only copy.
how it worksEssays and interviews, alongside the poetry. Commissions considered.
A guest sits down across from me and offers a name, a worry, a joke, or nothing at all. A few minutes later they stand up holding the only copy of a poem that did not exist before they sat down. Holiday parties, brand activations, weddings, conferences; eleven years at the typewriter.
I arrive early with a manual typewriter and a stack of card stock, and take the seat you have set for me.
I ask what the poem should be about. Most people say a person. Some say the open bar. Either works.
People gather and read over shoulders. A line forms, and the line is part of the evening.
No carbon, no photo unless they take one. The usual reaction is happy tears.
ten to twenty poems an hour, depending on how long we talk. i write longer than most.
Typed on a Smith-Corona Silent for guests who gave me a name and a minute. First names only. Each card opens to its transcription.
to name a few
For large rooms I bring another typewriter poet I trust, with their own machine, so nobody waits long. Two tables, two lines, twice the poems.
Your event name, date, or logo stamped on every card before it leaves the table. The poem is the keepsake; the stamp says where it came from.
The practice
I can usually tell what someone needs before they give me a topic.
People have tattooed these poems on their bodies and read them aloud as wedding vows. One of them went to space.
The usual reaction is happy tears.
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Send the date, the city, and a rough head count. I reply within a day with availability and the rate sheet. Two-hour minimum; travel outside Los Angeles quoted up front.
Photographic documentation of paintings and works on paper, for artists, galleries, and estates — the full work square to the frame, plus details at working resolution.
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