FUTURES x Magnum Artist Spotlight: Parisa Aminolahi
Description
Please join us for the first FUTURES x Magnum Artist Spotlight of 2026 with Parisa Aminolahi.
Paris Aminolahi will present her first photo-book, How the Nights Can Fly, published by Huwawabooks.
How the Nights Can Fly (formerly Tehran Diary) is a long-term photographic project by Parisa Aminolahi, tracing the intimate life of her mother across Tehran and temporary reunions with her children living abroad. Begun in 2012, the work reflects on distance, migration, aging, and the quiet weight of filial love shaped by the Iranian diaspora following the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Photographed on 35mm black-and-white film and later intervened with acrylic paint on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper Supreme, the images form a hybrid language between photography and painting. The painted gestures transform everyday moments into surreal, tactile spaces, echoing both the emotional distance between mother and child and the artist’s attempt to hold on to presence across continents.
Over time, the project became a deeply personal and therapeutic process, with the artist’s mother emerging as both subject and muse. Following her mother’s passing in 2022, the work gained a new resonance, shifting from documentation toward memory, absence, and care.
The dummy was developed under the guidance of Corinne Noordenbos and has since evolved through a new edit, concept, and title in collaboration and under the guidance of designer and publisher Roï Saade. The book is envisioned to be published by Huwawabooks, Saade’s newly founded publishing house.
Previously titled Tehran Diary, the project has received wide international recognition, including being shortlisted for the MACK First Book Award, BUP Book Award, and PHmuseum Women Photographers Grant, and has been exhibited and published extensively worldwide.
Details:
Online
Tuesday 14 April
5 - 6 pm Amsterdam time
Free – Registration required