As part of Photo Month 2008 and for the first time in France, the Centre culturel suisse is presenting a monographic exhibition of photographs by Shirana Shahbazi. Born in Tehran in 1974, the artist came to Europe with her family in 1985 and now lives in Zurich. Her photos, taken at different times on visits to Berlin, Zurich, Los Angeles or Tehran, are a mix of portraits, landscapes or still life, whose subjects and scenes collide with each other making it difficult to distinguish the places, countries or origins depicted. Her installations are a diverse series of formal or conceptual associations of photographs in different and often gigantic formats. Recurring themes can be seen in Shahbazi’s compositions which are often inspired by the Dutch and Flemish classics of the 17th century or from advertising, like baskets of fruit, shells and still life from hunts, and she often isolates particular elements and works them to the limits of representation. Her photos have a certain universalistic abstraction, sometimes even veering towards a total absence of subject, apart from pure colour itself. Even though Shirana Shahbazi draws from her origins to contrast them with western culture, her work refutes and avoids any distinctive identity other than her own. It is therefore sometimes difficult for the spectator to perceive the time and place of these images which form part of the global representation of contemporary photography.