Javad Parsa (born 18. november 1985 in Sary, Iran)
I started photography when I was 18 years old. At the beginning I worked as a waiter in a restaurant in Sari, in Northern Iran, to earn some money to buy me a camera. In 2005 I began taking pictures for Fars News Agency in Iran after I met its picture editor by chance. I still remember that during that time I hardly knew how cameras worked. While I was shooting for them I used to experiment a lot and in those four intense years I ve always tried to find interesting ways to shoot the subject which I was interested in. I was born in a country, Iran, where real democracy is not existing. In 2005 I got a full-time position as photographer with the national government-controlled news-agency of Iran, in 2007 I was admitted to the Khabar University to study photography. My images were often banned by the government that did not like my personal vision of Iran. In 2009 during the public protests, after the so called Iranian elections, I was assigned by my agency to document the events. Some of my images were smuggled out of Iran and published by international magazines, one was choosen for the cover of the 29 june 2009 edition of Time Magazine. Within few days I had to leave Iran permanently since the government was trying to arrest me for my images published abroad. I had also to leave my studies behind. I have since lived in Turkey and in 2010 been living in Oslo, Norway. Now i’m working as a freelance photographer for Norwegian newspapers.
