Tehran Rooftops

After moving to Tehran, I began photographing the city from its rooftops. From street level, Tehran often appeared crowded and difficult to read. Looking from above revealed another layer of the city: water tanks, cooling units, aerials, cables and unfinished structures distributed across neighbouring buildings. These practical additions created their own repeated forms and visual relationships. I was drawn to rooftops as spaces that belong to buildings but remain partly outside their public image. They accumulate the equipment and provisional constructions required for everyday urban life, while also offering viewpoints that are unavailable from the street. Each photograph presents only a limited section of this wider landscape.

I arrange the photographs as overlapping prints rather than as a single continuous panorama. Their edges remain visible, and each image partially interrupts another. This presentation reflects my experience of looking across Tehran: the city does not resolve into one complete view but emerges through fragments, distances and changing lines of sight. The work explores how both vantage point and image arrangement shape our perception of an urban environment.