Photojournalist Yalda Moaiery documents struggles, bravery of Iranian women in Sausalito exhibit

In her home country, Iranian photojournalist Yalda Moaiery would never be able to put on a show like the one that was hung this week at the Sausalito Center for the Arts: photos that offer “glimpses of truth” about what life is really like in Iran, especially for women “fighting for normal rights.”

“Over the past 20 years, I have devoted myself to documenting the struggles of Iranian women: their defiance against government dress codes, their relentless pursuit of education, their battles in courts for the custody of their children and their empty-handed protests in the streets. Women’s issues and their relentless quest for freedom have dominated my work, reflecting the pervasive oppression and discrimination rooted in my gender and the patriarchal nature of my profession,” Moaiery writes in her artist statement for the exhibit.

With Moaiery’s images usually accompanying news stories over the years, this will be the first time that her work will be shown in this way: in a large collection where people can see a more “complete story,” she says, of what she’s captured behind the lens all these years, including images that may seem “normal” at first glance.

“I showed one of my pictures to a journalist recently,” she says. “And I asked her, ‘What is this picture of?’ It was a picture of a woman singing in a private ceremony. And she said, ‘It’s a normal picture.’ I said, ‘No, it’s not a normal picture. Women cannot sing in Iran. So if the police come to this ceremony, they’re going to arrest all of them and put them in jail.’ The story behind these pictures are powerful,” says Moaiery, who often shares the context of her images on social media.

Presented by the Sausalito Center for the Arts and Artistic Freedom Initiative, a nonprofit organization that facilitates pro bono immigration representation and resettlement assistance for international artists who are persecuted or censored, her exhibit, “Standing in the Dust,” will run through July 28 at the Sausalito gallery.

A panel discussion on “The Power of Photography in Defying Censorship,” with Moaiery, Ashley Tucker, the co-executive director of the Artistic Freedom Initiative, Moaiery’s friend, Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, a Marin native who spent 544 days in prison after being convicted of false espionage charges while living and working in Tehran for the Post, and moderator Persis Karim, the director of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University, is at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Sausalito Center for the Arts. A $20 donation is suggested at the door. For more information about the exhibit and to RSVP for the panel, go to sausalitocenterforthearts.org.

“I think that the moment is right,” Rezaian says. “Iran will inevitably be part of our national conversation, and anything that we can do to give a more nuanced and human picture of the place, as well as give a voice to the people and their struggles, is really essential. It’s what I’ve tried to do in my reporting. It’s what drew me to her images so long ago. Sadly, neither of us are able to work there at this point. This show will coincide with 10 years since I was arrested and thrown out of Iran after spending a year and a half in prison. And our windows into that country are fewer and fewer and fewer. So Yalda’s work is really essential and critical. It’s special to be able to do this here. I’m hoping that Marin County gives Yalda the reception that she deserves.”

They first connected in the 2000s when Rezaian, then working as a freelance journalist out of San Francisco, was looking for a photographer for the stories he was reporting on in Iran.

“The stories that I was telling were very colorful and vivid and didn’t match up with people’s impressions of Iran,” Rezaian says. “I found Yalda on the internet. She was one of the first Iranian photojournalists who had their own website, and her images really matched up with my impressions of the country.”

While Moaiery says that being a photojournalist is a job that doesn’t exist now in her country, she hopes to continue finding places to showcase her work as well as eventually pick back up her work as a photojournalist here.

Early beginnings

Growing up, Moaiery didn’t hear much about people being photojournalists. It wasn’t really on her radar when she first started learning photography as a teenager from her father, who did it as a hobby.

But when she started photographing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and conflicts with the United States, she decided her work could be used to “show the world the things I think are important,” says Moaiery, who has shot conflicts, wars and natural disasters around the world.

“(Iran) do not keep any evidence. They can disappear everything they want suddenly. So it’s really important to document these things with pictures or with words and tell people what’s happening to my people,” she says.

For her work, Moaiery was awarded the 2018 Courage in Journalism Award for her iconic image of the 2018 Iranian protests and the 2023 Wallis Annenberg Justice for Women Journalists Award from the International Women’s Media Foundation.

She’s been imprisoned six times throughout her career, mostly recently in 2022 while covering the protests that erupted after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, while she under the custody of Iran’s morality police.

For Iranian American Shiva Pakdel, that hits close to home.

“I was visiting Iran on Sept. 16, 2022, when Mahsa Amini was killed by the hands of the Iranian morality police,” says Pakdel, a Marin artist and the executive director of the Sausalito Center for the Arts.

“The events that followed were a turning point in the consciousness of Iranians. The images of bravery from the Iranian girls, their resilience against a repressive regime, their struggles of everyday life, their courage and their hopes and dreams were evermore moving. I’ve always been interested in opportunities that shine a spotlight on Iran. Yalda’s powerful photography truly impacts emotions faster and more powerfully than words. I am proud of the Sausalito Center for the Arts for bringing this iconic photography exhibition to the Bay Area audiences.”

Following a suspended sentence, Moaiery, in legal jeopardy, came stateside to get her award by the International Women’s Media Foundation. She now lives in South San Francisco with her parents.

Recently, a collection of her images of some of the women she met in her latest stint in prison ran in the Washington Post. The photos were taken where they were arrested, along with their names, ages and what they were arrested for.

“They were very happy that I wanted to do this,” Moaiery says. “They helped me. They pushed me to do it. I wrote a book in prison and the days that I didn’t write they started to tell me, ‘Why did you stop it? Write our stories and show it to the people.'”

“People there do not have connection with the world; when you are alone, the regime can put more pressure on you to do anything they want. So they wanted to be in contact with the other parts of the world for them to know what is going on there. The women that I took pictures of, most of them are young women, and they are very brave. I couldn’t even believe it. … And when I was talking to them, they said that ‘we don’t have anything to lose. We want to fight.’ It’s important to tell these stories for them.”