Mahdiyeh Afshar Bakeshloo is an Iranian fine art and conceptual photographer based in Tehran. Her artistic journey began in 2014 with two years of formal training in photography, which laid the foundation for her distinct style, focused on expressing complex human emotions through visual storytelling. Afshar’s work explores the emotional landscape of feelings such as sadness, confusion, and solitude, often conveyed through minimalistic compositions that juxtapose the human body with inanimate, everyday objects. Her black-and-white, single-frame images are known for their symbolic depth, emotional clarity, and poetic ambiguity, offering a visual translation of emotions that are difficult to articulate—feelings we sense but cannot fully express.
As Afshar explains, "Each of my projects describes human emotions like sadness, loneliness, and confusion. I aim to help viewers discover their hidden feelings through my photos. Every time I take a photo, my personal emotions guide the direction of my work. I want to create a shared space with the viewer—a visual dialogue."
Her work has been featured in numerous prestigious international publications, including the British Journal of Photography, F-Stop Magazine, Fraction Magazine, The Eye of Photography, and Suboart Magazine, which also published an in-depth interview with her in 2023. One of her images was shortlisted for Portrait of Humanity Vol. 5, which was published by the British Journal of Photography and covered by The Times (UK).