Untitled, from the "There Are No Homosexuals in Iran" series

About the Photographer

Rasti, Laurence

Swiss, b. 1990

In 2007, the former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave a speech at Columbia University in which he stated, “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.” His words echo in the title of Laurence Rasti’s series Il n’y a pas d’homosexuels en Iran (There are no Homosexuals in Iran). Homosexuality does indeed exist in Iran, even if consensual relations between members of the same sex are punishable by death. Rasti captures sensitive portraits of gay Iranian refugees in the Turkish town of Denizli, through which they often travel as they exit their home country. Rasti obscures the faces of her subjects who prefer to remain anonymous, a reminder that their lives have been under threat.

Laurence Rasti completed her MFA from Geneva University of Art and Design in 2019. In 2017, her photobook titled "There Are No Homosexuals in Iran" was nominated as one of the 10 best photobooks of 2017 by the New York Times. Rasti has exhibited nationally and internationally in both solo and group shows, including at Iran Contemporary, the Fotohof Art Gallery in Austria, and ReGeneration3 at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne. Rasti has also been featured in different festivals such as PhotoKatmandu, Athens Photo Festival and Tokyo International Photography Festival. This work was featured in the 2017 MoCP exhibition, Disruptive Perspectives.