Load-Bearing
Portraits of the people who build
- Black-and-white portraiture, medium format film
- Construction sites, Tehran and surrounding provinces
- 2018
A portrait series of the people Hooman worked alongside during his years in civil engineering. Foremen, welders, crane operators and laborers, photographed on-site, in work clothes, without staging. Each subject is shown with one tool or material central to their trade, treated with the same formal respect usually reserved for portraits of artists or intellectuals.
The title borrows a structural engineering term on purpose: a load-bearing wall holds up everything above it without ever being seen. These are portraits of the people doing that job, literally and otherwise.
A foreman standing before a half-built structure, arms crossed