SHE SEES BEAUTY THROUGH THE EYE OF A CAMERA
The photographs of Iran Issa-Khan, who says that as an artist she is never satisfied with her work, take you through an inner journey of discovery. Hong Xiao and Ji Tao report from Miami, Florida.
As you get closer, you can’t help but be wowed by the images of flowers, tropical plants and seashells as seen through the lens of Iran IssaKhan. And the lens of Issa-Khan sees images only to turn them into pure art.
No wonder the late architect Zaha Hadid once described an Issa-Khan photograph as “a journey of discovery into the very DNA of its creation”.
“An object is never what it appears to be at the first glance,” is how IssaKhan describes her close-up works. “Deep observation reveals formal complexity, repetition, color and texture flowing from the images in the same manner in which one would unravel an algorithm. We begin to truly comprehend the evolution of life itself,” she adds.
Journey into nature
“My own experimentation and research into increased complexity and fluidity in architecture has led us on the path towards these natural systems … Every individual has its beauty, and my aim in photography is simple — capture beauty in every form,” says the celebrated Persian photographer.
Born in Teheran, Iran’s capital, and raised in Europe and the United States, Issa-Khan developed the idea of becoming a photographer in the late 1970s.
At a time when Issa-Khan was living in the US, a friend working for The New York Times suggested that she learn photography “because I knew everybody around the world”.
“Of course, I’d love to become a photographer, but I don’t know how to shoot,” she remembers telling her friend.
Issa-Khan started her career by studying photography with renowned photographer William Minor Jr.
“The minute I picked up a camera, that little eye showed me everything,” she recalls. “I could see the world with that little eye in the camera. And I realized this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”
For a whole year, “I learned everything, how to do darkroom, how to shoot,” she says.
It was in the 1980s and 1990s that Issa-Khan made a name for herself with her portraits of the who’s who of the fashion world. She has photographed famous models such as Paulina Porizkova, Christy Turlington, Iman, Andie MacDowell, Debbie Dickinson and Talisa Soto, whose photographs have appeared on the covers of Vogue, Harper’s
Bazaar, Elle and in numerous advertising campaigns in the US, Europe and Latin America.
She has shot portraits of designers and their families including Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, the Ferragamo family, the Fendi family, Prince Egon and Diane von Furstenberg, Carolina and Reinaldo Herrera, and Paloma Picasso.
She has also photographed royals and state leaders and their families including the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough at Blenheim Palace, former president Andres Pastrana Arango of Colombia and his wife Nohra Puyana Bickenbach, and Baron David de Rothschild and Baroness Olympia de Rothschild in Paris.
Feather in the cap
Photographing former US first lady Nancy Reagan for her official White House portrait is one of the highlights of her illustrious career. She was introduced to the former US first lady by Carolina Herrera who designed Nancy Reagan’s clothes, because she (Herrera) was highly impressed by Issa-Khan’s work.
Since US-Iran relations had hit a new low at the time, only after passing through a very strict security check could Issa-Khan and her crew eventually enter the White House. Once inside, the first lady’s assistant told Issa-Khan that she’d get only an hour and a half to shoot the first lady’s portrait.
“I said no. I said, I (came) all the way from Persia. You’d better give me the whole day,” Issa-Khan says. “I told the assistant, ‘Tell Nancy I’m Aquarius … I knew that she (the first lady) was into horoscopes. And her husband President Reagan is Aquarius.”
“The minute (Nancy Reagan) heard that, she said, ‘OK, you get … the whole day’,” Issa-Khan says. “She was amazing … We put her on a chair to shoot her with the chandelier on top of her head so it would look like a crown. She looks like the queen (in the portrait).”
The people around Nancy Reagan told Issa-Khan not to do that. “But I am an artist, I just did what I thought was right,” she says. “And that’s how the picture came about. We spend the whole day with her, and we had the best time that day. She loved the pictures, and so did … (former US president Ronald Reagan).”
Talking about all the famous people around the world she has photographed, Issa-Khan says she still cannot believe that “these people are so human, they are so real, and they feel shy as much as you (do). But once you open the door for them … they’re yours.”
In 1999, after her makeup artist died of AIDS, Issa-Khan put her fashion and portrait work on hold, and shifted her focus to nature to capture the beauty of flora and fauna. “I realized this is the most beautiful thing in the world, because you see the purity of life.”
The nature photography IssaKhan, who lives and works in Miami, Florida, has so far produced captures nature in its purest forms. Today, passengers entering and exiting Miami International Airport are welcomed by 25 of her giant photographs at an exhibition titled Gifts from the Sea. They are displayed in the Skywalk between Terminals E and F.
“My many years of fashion and portrait photography have taught me that every individual has beauty that evolves from within. It’s my job to capture and powerfully convey that beauty to others.
“Just as (many other) people do, I believe that each plant, each tree, each shell — and nature itself — has an inner force and an inner beauty that glows,” she has written in the postscript of the book of photographs named after her and published in 2011 by Whitehaus Media Group.
Close friendship
The book’s foreword is written by Zaha Hadid. To the world-renowned Iraqi-born British architect, IssaKhan was so much more than a close friend.
The two first met in 2001 at IssaKhan’s first show of nature photography in London. Hadid was floored by the charm Issa-Khan’s work exuded. Without hesitation, she bought a piece and hanged it in her bedroom.
Hadid would come and stay with Issa-Khan in Miami for a couple of months each year — and then IssaKhan would repay the compliment to Hadid in London. Hadid died in Miami in 2016 after suffering a heart attack.
But even after four years of her death, Hadid remains a household name in China thanks to the numerous well-known architectures she and her team have helped build in the country. From the Beijing Galaxy SOHO to the Guangzhou Opera House and the newly opened Beijing Daxing International Airport, Hadid’s ingenious and fabulous creations have changed the skyline of many a Chinese city and reshaped modern architecture.
London’s Design Museum described her work as having “the highly expressive, sweeping fluid forms of multiple perspective points and fragmented geometry that evoke the chaos and flux of modern life”.
Issa-Khan believes the Middle East background she shared with Hadid had a profound influence on their artistic creations. “I think we became close friends when she saw what I could do with nature because her work and mine are very similar in a way,” Issa-Khan says.
Beauty and character
“If you look at her work and mine, it’s very sensual, very rounded. Everything is very natural. It’s very ‘Middle East’,” she says. “I think part of it has to do with (the fact that) that is our Middle Eastern background, because this is how we were raised, you know, with sensuality and beautiful images and the refinement of character …”
Hadid has written in the foreword, “Contemporary architecture is striving to emulate nature and imbue the discipline with the intricate beauty of natural forms … We see an order, a logical, lawful differentiation of structures with the elegance of coherence.”
Issa-Khan’s “characteristic photography continues to inspire, igniting that deepest of connections we all experience with the beauty and intricacy of natural forms. … Iran’s motifs of choice — flowers, shells and corals — are among my own inspirational sources of artistic creation”, Hadid has written.
“The formal arrangement of petals, stems and branches, and the structural integrity of shells and cocoons provide a timeless reference for my repertoire, evoking a rich and varied architectural language with the inherent capacity for complex spatial programming.”
As an artist, Issa-Khan says she is never satisfied with her work. “You think you can always do better, and it is never enough. You need to push and push and push. As an artist, when you think that you are the best, it is time for you to stop. You should always think that tomorrow something new and better is going to happen,” she says.
“Right now, I’m doing nature shots, but tomorrow, I don’t know what I’m going to work on. That’s the most exciting thing about being an artist,” she signs off with a smile.