Peyman Hooshmandzadeh

Peyman Hooshmandzadeh is a photographer, born in Tehran, Iran, in 1969. He has a BA in photography from Azad University. Since his first exhibition in 1995, Hooshmandzadeh has had over eighty solo exhibitions and has participated in numerous group shows, at home and abroad. He has worked as a photojournalist for Iranian newspapers and agencies, as well as various international organisations — including Reuters. He is the winner of dozens of national and international photographic awards. His work has been shown in such venues as the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art and Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.

Malu Halasa, Literary Editor at The Markaz Review, is a London-based writer and editor. Her latest book as editor is Woman Life Freedom: Voices and Art From the Women’s Protests in Iran (Saqi 2023). Her six previous co-edited anthologies include Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline, with coedited with Zaher Omareen & Nawara Mahfoud; The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie: Intimacy and Design, with Rana Salam; and the short series: Transit Beirut: New Writing and Images, with Rosanne Khalaf, and Transit Tehran: Young Iran and Its Inspirations, with Maziar Bahari. She was managing editor of the Prince Claus Fund Library; a founding editor of Tank Magazine and Editor at Large for Portal 9. As a freelance journalist in London, she has covered wide-ranging subjects, from water as occupation in Israel/Palestine to Syrian comics during the present-day conflict. Her books, exhibitions and lectures chart a changing Middle East. Malu Halasa’s debut novel, Mother of All Pigs was reviewed by the New York Times as “a microcosmic portrait of … a patriarchal order in slow-motion decline.” Find her on X @halasamalu and Instagram @Malu Halasa.