ArtDependence | Iranian Born Photographer Wins International Portrait Photographer of the Year for Second Time

Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Iranian-born photographer Forough Yavari has been crowned the overall winner of the International Portrait Photographer of the Year competition.

Her triumph stems from her breathtaking series titled 'Salvation', a creation inspired by the poetry of Langston Hughes, which she read at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The collection features portraits of Black women, enhanced by Yavari's incorporation of meticulously hand-crafted 24K gold pigment onto the printed images.

"For this project I'm inspired by Langston Hughes' poems. He was a poet, playwrite and social activist and there are two main elements in his work which I'm inspired by – dance and blues, which refer to freedom and loneliness. So this work is based on those two elements, dance and music, which resonates because I have it in my own heritage as well," Yavari told the National Portrait Gallery.

This marks the second time Yavari has topped the competition.