Sohrab N.

Sohrab N. shoots on 35mm film from a fixed vantage point — the sidewalk or café across the street from whichever Tehran gallery is opening that night. He is less interested in the art on the walls than in who shows up for it: the cigarette break on the pavement, a woman adjusting her scarf under a streetlamp, the tea seller who has learned the gallery schedule better than most critics. The frames are unposed and slightly underexposed, printed on matte paper that keeps the city's dust and neon in the same tonal register. Over a decade he has built an informal archive of Tehran's art-going public — a document of a scene that international coverage rarely shows. His prints reach All The Good Things through a screened export partner working out of Tehran.

Sohrab N. photographs Tehran's gallery openings from across the street — the crowd, the tea glasses, the city that keeps showing up for art on a Friday night.

Tehran, Iran

That the crowd outside an opening is as much the art scene as anything hung inside it.