Atefe Moeini Named BJP Ones to Watch 2025 Artist

Atefe Moeini, an Iranian photographer now studying at Yale School of Art, has been selected for British Journal of Photography's Ones to Watch 2025 cohort, nominated by artist and educator Amak Mahmoodian. Moeini discovered photography at 15 in Iran through Instagram selfies, later learning via YouTube tutorials due to lack of formal art education. Her black-and-white images are gestural, raw, and collaborative, often featuring fellow diasporic Iranians. She describes her work as 'constructed' rather than staged, embracing accidents. Influences include Gillian Wearing, Chantal Akerman, Vilém Flusser (especially his essay 'Taking Up Residence in Homelessness'), and poet Forough Farrokhzad. After the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, Moeini found it difficult to make pictures in Iran, so she photographed friends in domestic spaces as resistance. Since arriving in the US in 2024, she is exploring new freedom while photographing Iranian-Americans in Los Angeles and making self-portraits with objects from Iran, such as fabrics and state-issued propaganda materials. Her work explores touch, care, and gestures of solidarity. Moeini is currently working on a project combining archival materials with photography to examine intergenerational memory in Iranian families.