Arash Kiani

Arash Kiani spends most mornings in Shiraz's Vakil Bazaar, camera at chest height rather than eye level, working close enough that vendors know him by name. He deliberately avoids the wide, empty-arcade angle that appears on postcards, instead framing the crowded middle distance — a hand counting change, a scale mid-weigh, two stallholders mid-argument over a delivery. He shoots in long stretches without a fixed subject, editing down from several hundred frames to the handful where the transaction itself, not the architecture around it, is the clear subject. Kiani has photographed the same bazaar section for over a decade and can name most of the vendors in his frames. His prints reach ATG through a screened export partner.

Arash Kiani documents the working markets of Shiraz at eye level — stalls, hands, transactions — resisting the postcard angle in favour of the crowded middle distance.

Shiraz, Iran

That a market is made by its transactions, not its architecture, and the camera should stay at the height of a hand exchanging coins.