Parisa Azadi Burns Instax Prints as Mourning for Iran Protests

Iranian-Canadian visual journalist Parisa Azadi describes burning her Instax prints in January 2026 as an act of mourning after state massacres and executions during Iran's anti-government protests. Unable to return to Iran, she used open-source protest footage from social media, isolating frames and photographing them directly from her computer with a Fujifilm Instax camera to transform ephemeral digital pixels into physical objects. One image shows crowds in Tehran circling a bonfire in November 2022, chanting 'You're the pervert. You're the whore. I'm a free woman' in defiance of strict dress codes. Azadi's practice, which began by giving Instax portraits as yadegari ('something to remember me by') to strangers in Iran, evolved during the uprising to embrace the 'poor image' concept, as described by German artist Hito Steyerl, as a politically potent form of testimony. The burning of prints is not erasure but a way to convey rage, grief, and refusal, echoing the violence depicted. Azadi's work is part of a wider body drawn from protest fragments, responding to a movement insisting on bodily freedom.