Whenever architect Zaha Hadid comes to Miami, which is a good amount these days, she makes sure to hit the town with Iran Issa-Khan, a Tehran-born photographer and society mainstay. “I don’t think of Miami without Iran,” says Hadid, who wrote the foreword to Iran’s latest, self-titled book of photographs, published by Whitehaus.
Issa-Khan left her home country with her family ahead of the 1979 revolution and established herself in the decades that followed as a portrait and fashion photographer for such publications as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. In the last ten years, however, she has shifted her focus to natural forms, especially the sensuous curves and spirals of plants and sea life that can hardly be improved upon.
“Coming from the earth or the sea, where no human beings had touched it, everything was real,” says Issa-Khan. “After having shot fashion for so many years, where everything was so fake, I fell in love with it.”