Kourosh Etemad

Kourosh Etemad shoots on medium-format film, working early mornings before Tehran's traffic fills the frame, when the light is flat enough to read concrete as concrete rather than as silhouette. His subject is the city's Brutalist-era infrastructure — stairwells, underpasses, drainage channels — much of it built over routes the ancient qanat system carved underground centuries earlier. He researches each site's water history before shooting, and prints include the qanat name in the caption, not just the street address. Etemad trained as a civil engineer before turning to photography full time, which shows in how precisely he frames load-bearing lines. His prints reach ATG through a screened export partner who has worked with him since his first gallery show in Tehran.

Kourosh Etemad photographs Tehran's Brutalist-era infrastructure — stairwells, underpasses, the concrete channels that still trace the city's ancient qanat water lines underground.

Tehran, Iran

That the concrete infrastructure everyone walks past is still following water routes drawn a thousand years before it was poured.