Nazak Pahlavi (1958-1987). A photographer born a Princess, interested in the female form, full of interrupted promise in her short career as a photographer. In 1979, at the inception of the Islamic Revolution, she ran away to São Paulo, married at age 23, and spent time in exile as a sales-assistant in Paris before dying aged only 29 under unknown circumstances.
During her time in Brazil, the country to which she fled with a fake passport, she was encouraged by her mother in law to pursue photography. Under the pseudonym Nazak Zartosht she publishes in Fotoptica a series titled ‘Unusual Nudes.’ She also explores her feelings about marriage in this photographic series.
Later inspired by Chico Nascimento of the magazine Paris Match, she produces ‘Women Under the Skirt,’ and was asked in 1980 by the magazine to go to Iran to photograph the country being swept under Islamism. She refused after receiving news that Rahim Ali Khorram, the father of her friend, was executed by the regime.
Of the little information puzzled together on Nazak Pahlavi, her life and career as a photographer, she reads like a daring, cultured, artistic, and offbeat woman from Iran, who could perhaps have ended up being on a par with Forough Farrokhzad – one of Iran’s most celebrated poets – in the Iranian psyche, daringly exploring the female form and the question of womanhood.
Cited as being perpetually rebellious since childhood, fleeing to Brazil, marrying young, divorcing, hanging out with artists and poets of the Parisian art scene in the 1980’s, she pursued her art for only 10 short years. Opting for the Parisian art scene, she was untypical of Iranians in exile.
DENA ZIARI 