Through the Lens of Mitra Tabrizian
"Prophesying catastrophe is incredibly banal. The more original move is to assume that it has already happened.” - Jean Baudrillard
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Mitra Tabrizian is an Iranian-British artist and filmmaker. Her photographic work has been exhibited and published widely, and is represented in major international museums and public collections. Solo museum shows include Tate Britain (2008). She exhibited at the Venice Biennale (2015), and is the recipient of the Royal Academy’s Rose Award for Photography (2013) and the Royal Photographic Society’s Honorary Fellowship (2021). Her critically acclaimed debut feature Gholam (British-Iranian film, 2018) had a successful theatrical release. The film is now available on BFI Player and Amazon Prime, and has been released on VOD worldwide. She collaborated with Booker Prize winner Ben Okri on the short film The Insider (2018), commissioned by the Coronet Theatre to accompany The Outsider by Albert Camus, adapted for the stage by Okri. She is currently developing her second feature, The Far Mountains, with the BFI.
A powerful return to still photography
Mitra Tabrizian’s recent photographic series, The Silence of Numbers, marks a powerful return to still photography while reflecting a heightened sense of dislocation prompted by recent global upheavals. The series, which began in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, is divided into two parts. The first features inverted cityscapes—images both literally and metaphorically turned upside down—evoking the vertiginous uncertainty of the pandemic era. The second presents subtly uncanny views of contemporary urban landscapes. At first glance, these images may appear deceptively mundane, yet each frame is imbued with a quiet sense of foreboding.
A lone figure walking into a void, birds embedded in grass rather than sky—such moments of visual dissonance conjure a world made unfamiliar, echoing the surreal suspension of daily life during lockdown.
The series’ title is enigmatic, rich with interpretive possibilities. It might mourn how COVID-19 victims were reduced to statistics—'the silence of numbers' echoing not only the dead, but the quiet void they left behind. This abstraction of loss fuels the work’s emotional core. The title may also reflect our collective silence in the face of environmental catastrophe, a theme the project increasingly foregrounds.
The stillness within the images becomes a register of mourning: a silence not just of sound, but of explanation, presence, and belonging.
Tabrizian has long been preoccupied with themes of alienation, exile, and disconnection. Her earlier series, such as Border and Naked City, similarly explore the psychological and political dimensions of marginalisation, often eschewing narrative closure in favour of fragment and suggestion. Her figures are not participants in clear stories, but phantom-like actors in moments of stasis, caught in transition, or perhaps introspection. Drawing upon ideas from Artaud and Brecht, Tabrizian embraces the theatricality of her constructed scenes, encouraging viewers to reflect critically rather than to passively emote.
Her use of "straight" photography—eschewing digital manipulation—amplifies the tension between the real and the surreal, reinforcing the unsettling familiarity of her worlds.
In The Silence of Numbers, this dialectic is intensified. The photographic inversion momentarily disorients the viewer, who is prompted to look again, and again, to question not only what they see, but what they assume. The very act of perception is unsettled, mirroring the existential dislocation of recent years. Nature in these works appears not as refuge but as menace—bleak skies, intrusive foliage, landscapes turned oppressive and almost unrecognisable. Meanwhile, urban backdrops assert themselves with a cold indifference. These are not spaces of community, but of estrangement. Not to be overlooked, however, is the fact that, amid the inversion, the people in Tabrizian’s photographs always remain upright. They stand tall against all odds. This hushed defiance carries a flicker of resilience.
Even in the loneliest, darkest hour, even when the sky appears to be caving in, there remains the possibility of endurance, of dignity.
Crucially, Tabrizian avoids overt didacticism. While the socio-political context is deeply embedded in her imagery, she resists the lure of visual polemic. Instead, she creates contemplative spaces in which absence, silence, and ambiguity are allowed to resonate. Her work demands an active, even uneasy, engagement, urging us to confront not only the external realities of crisis and loss, but the internal reckonings they provoke.
In an era saturated with visual noise, The Silence of Numbers offers a radical gesture of restraint.
Through its subdued palette, its haunting emptiness, and its refusal of spectacle, the series speaks to the devastations of our time. Tabrizian reminds us that silence can be more than the absence of sound. It can be a space of memory, of mourning, and, perhaps, tentatively, of hope.
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