Ahmad Halabisaz

Ahmad Halabisaz

An Iranian woman sits on a chair in front of a busy square in Tehran, defying the mandatory hijab law. “A few days after Mahsa’s death, I was walking past Keshavarz Boulevard when I saw a massive crowd of men and women, young and old, chanting a slogan that I’ve never heard before: ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’. It enlightened me, it was moving,” she said. 27 December 2022.

Massive protests in Iran began after the arrest and death of Mahsa Jina Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who was taken into custody by the Islamic Republic’s morality police for allegedly violating the country’s mandatory hijab law. The protest spread rapidly from Amini’s hometown of Saqez to all regions of the country, involving  all age groups, social classes, ethnicities, and genders. The state’s response to protestors’ demands has been swift and severe: many have been injured or killed by state security forces and many more have been arrested. Independent journalists covering the protests have also faced intimidation and the threat of arrest. To demonstrate their opposition to the government, women in Iran have been going out in public without wearing a hijab, turning everyday life into an act of civil disobedience.

“In the first days of the protests in Iran, I was arrested on the streets of Tehran. After 27 days, I was released on bail waiting for the court session. I went to the streets to have a look again and saw many women who were not wearing the hijab. I was shocked, they were brave, they were beautiful, they melted my heart. It was dangerous and stressful for me to take photos again after prison, but I couldn’t censor myself. Despite my pain, I started to take pictures of the women of the revolution. This picture was one of them,” stated the photographer. 

Ahmad Halabisaz is an Iranian freelance photographer and visual storyteller focused on social issues his personal projects.

He began photographing at the age of fourteen and studied photojournalism at the Iranian Journalists Association University. He worked in Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey, Lebanon and France. His works have been published in major international outlets, including Time, The Guardian, Le Monde and The New York Times, among others. He has won several international photography awards, including the World Press Photo Award in 2023.

In 2022, while covering the Women, Life, Freedom protests in Iran, he was jailed and later banned from working as a photographer in Iran. After his release, He left his homeland to rebuild his career in another corner of the world.