words and photos by Shabnam Ferdowsi
I met Tara in the most 2023 way.
Tara was looking for a camera on facebook marketplace when she came across my listing. I had to let her down since I’d already sold it, but we stayed in the chat to exchange Instagram handle anyway. Selling camera gear on the internet has proven to be a really cool way to meet other like-minded photographers (of course, you both had your eye on the same camera at one point) and we both were keen to keep that spirit up. As it turned out, Tara was also Persian, had a beautiful Instagram account full of 35mm photos of Iran, and drew a lot of inspiration in her set design work from Persian textures and visuals. I felt instantly that I needed to collaborate with this gal!
So Tara, equally excited about this serendipitous internet connection, invited me to her home for an afternoon of sunny portraits and tea. Nestled in the hills of Bel Air, in a home she shares with a handful of other young creative women, Tara shared with me her story over some chaee and shirini (tea and cookies).
Tara in her backyard, under an astrology banner she had hung up for a Co-Star themed birthday party the weekend before.
Born and raised in Orange County, photography was something that fell into Tara’s life out of nowhere. As most eastern cultures go, Iranians don’t normally end up in the arts, we typically end up in the sciences.
But one day in 2015, when Tara , a self proclaimed lover of organization, was cleaning out her mom’s closet, she came across a big bag of old stuff. In this bag of stuff was a camera, without an LCD screen on the back, that caught her eye. She bought her first roll of film at Samy’s Camera in Costa Mesa, and when the scans came back from the lab she was hooked.
Now, after a stint in corporate America running the social media for a law firm (and hating it!), Tara is playing and freelancing around Los Angeles as a multidisciplinary artist.
As a photographer, she mainly works with budding musicians, shooting primarily on film. As a set designer, she takes a lot of inspiration from Iran (think Persian rugs and mirrored tablecloths) and uses this medium to pay homage to her culture.
Her relationship with her Persianness wasn’t always this inspired.
Growing up, she spent every summer with her family in Iran, a special experience I could relate to. But what came with this intimate connection with our roots was the stark disconnect we would feel as we would land back at LAX, back home in Southern California, on the other side of the planet from the rest of our families.
At home in Orange County, Taraneh became Tara, and Tara was hesitant to express her love and affection for Iran with her peers or through her work. But she had rolls and rolls of film photos taken in Tehran and beyond during her travels and wanted to find a way to share them, so she launched @IranOnFilm in 2020. By sharing this part of herself, she’s been able to expand her own creativity and feel confident in her skin as an Iranian-American.
bags of pofak, a puffy cheetoh-like snack, that marked all our childhoods like salty,orange stained fingertips.
