“Aghigh Afkhami, a second-year student in the photography MFA program at MassArt, creates images that conjure the past. Originally from Iran (where she also received her undergraduate degree), Afkhami describes her home country as “the land that shaped my being.” Afkhami’s work centers around homeland and memory. Achieved through mostly grayscale images, Afkhami’s series Lov captures acts of remembering and detachment, spurred by migration. She intentionally obscures the locations of her images using close crops of her subjects, often shooting in infrared or black and white. In some photos, Afkhami includes lines of text created by Sharpie or spray paint. In Iran, she explained, the government attempted to conceal political messages graffitied on walls. Despite their effort to erase the words, the writing still peeped through. When she came to America, Afkhami carried this thought. Now, she was experimenting with shrouding people in her photos, but not in totality. She still wants to leave a glimpse.”

“My work is mostly about me: my memories, my life experience, and at the same time, it’s about my generation in Iran,” Afkhami said. “There’s this huge struggle of youth, the economy, mandatory laws, and at the same time you’re trying to survive and experience the joy of life.”

“Next to Afkhami’s studio inside the Kennedy building at MassArt, Andrew Zou, also a second-year MassArt student, is working on a chronological series of photographs. In Zou’s To Love, To Remember, seasons provide the backdrop for images of Zou’s parents. Shot from 2020 to 2024, these photographs portray the annual transitions in Jiangxi Province, China. In summer, Zou’s parents shed their layers. In winter, they gain them back.”