Documentary photos & text by Masoud Amin Naji copyright Masoud Amin Naji, 2025
We are delighted to present Masoud Amin Naji as our featured photographer. His work documents the plight of street children in Iran, who are forced into labour due to economic hardship. Through his lens, Masoud offers a rare and powerful glimpse into a reality that is often hidden from view, as access to such stories from Iran remains extremely difficult.
“This is the Middle East. It consists of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. The people here are kind and knowledgeable, but for various reasons such as tribal wars, poor economy, cultural and religious differences, they are forced to either abandon their children or use them for a living. They force children who are deprived of education, love, happiness, fun and play to do hard and tiring work. Even if they do not want to work, they are forced to work and, without wanting to, they lose a good life full of happiness, health and respect.
Maybe they can be helped to return to the normal cycle of life. There is no doubt that they are brilliant talents. You may have heard these sentences in newspaper headlines or in films such as Bicycle Thief (Ladri di Bicicletta), but here with these documentary photos we want to talk about children whose entire childhood or perhaps their entire life is spent longing for a normal life.
After all, for what crime and mistake should the entire life and happiness of a child be ruined, this is the Middle East and such things happens a lot, let’s be together for once and work for women and children so that they can have a normal life” – Masoud Amin Naji
IN FOCUS brings together two remarkable photographers whose works centre on the themes of community and diaspora, exploring identity, memory, and the cultural landscapes that shape collective experiences.
Myah Asha Jeffers is a Barbadian-British writer, director, photographer and dramaturg. As the previous Literary Associate at the Royal Court Theatre, she was responsible for shaping the works of new and established playwrights. Myah’s photographic work has won the Portrait of Britain Prize twice and The Photography Foundation Social Documentary Award. She is the 2024 recipient of the renowned Joan Wakelin Bursary (Royal Photographic Society & The Guardian). Her photographs have been featured in publications such as Vogue, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Magazine, ELLE and The Independent amongst others. She has also worked in collaboration with the likes of Tate, Somerset House, ICA, South London Gallery and Whitechapel Gallery. Myah’s debut short film Bathsheba world premiered at Inside Out (TIFF) and has screened at festivals including New York Shorts, Leeds FF, Norwich FF and Atlanta’s Out on Film, garnering nominations at multiple festivals for Best British Film and Best Director. Myah’s practice I am a photographer, writer and director, particularly interested in witnessing and documenting the nuances of daily life within diasporic communities. My practice is conceptually focused on ‘Black Interiority’, where I closely examine themes such as class, cultural identity, queerness, grief, gesture, and truth. Working solely with small & medium format analogue cameras and darkroom-based hand printing processes, the work is particularly concerned with the intersection of “naturalism” and “myth”, through illuminating the magic of rituals, quiet, and connection. With a focus on the (in)tangibility and truth of grief / its relationship with what I call “living abstraction” – where Black folk sculpt or construct versions of themselves as a tool for survival; I aim to make work that lends itself to abstraction through the experimentation with form, monotone, texture, and structure. Exclusion Zone. I’ll be presenting a first preview of my most recent project, Exclusion Zone supported by the Joan Wakelin Bursary and the Visual Studies Workshop Artist Residency. In 1995, a series of seismic Volcanic eruptions rendered two thirds of the island of Montserrat uninhabitable, catalysing a mass exodus. With now only 20% of the island deemed habitable and a current population of just over 4000 people – Montserrat is one of the least populus countries in the world. It also happens to be one of the few remaining British colonies. The uninhabitable 80% of the island is known as the “Exclusion Zone” – a site of buried infrastructure, homes and memories. It is both a graveyard for relics of the past. This photo series explores the legacy of the natural disaster 30 years on; through the lens of both elders who are nostalgic of what the island was and young people who only know the island for what it is today.
Paulina Korobkiewicz (b. 1993, Suwałki, Poland) is a London-based photographer and visual artist. Her work explores themes of cultural identity, memory, and the transformation of social spaces. Her projects focus on the visual and cultural landscape of her hometown and region as well as that of her current residence in the UK, documenting everyday scenes and environments with a sense of nostalgia and socio-political commentary, drawing from her own experience of migration. Her practice involves community-based research, conducting workshops, and mentoring. In addition to developing long-form personal projects, Paulina continues to undertake commissions and residencies. Shehas participated in several group and solo exhibitions internationally. Her work has been featured in a variety of publications, such as Hapax Magazine, Kajet Journal, Contemporary Lynx, Photomonitor, the BJP, and Creative Review. Paulina is a winner of the Camberwell Book Prize, has been shortlisted and nominated for awards including BarTur Photobook Award, Magnum Graduate Photographers Award and Prix Pictet.
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This is the story of Mary, born on the 2nd of May 1994 in Mushalash, a small town in Lagos State in Nigeria. Her grandmother called her Tinuola, meaning “full of wealth” in the Yoruba language.
After a journey of more than 2.500 miles and endless time, which took her from Lagos to Benin City, then to Kano, Agadez in Niger and finally to the seaport city of Zuara in Libya, she arrived in Sicily in October 2014 and was transferred to Florence shortly afterwards. Following the end of one of the hospitality projects, she was transferred to Chivasso, a small town near Turin in 2017. Mary is a guest of the Mary Poppins association, a non-profit organisation that works with trafficked women.
The journey that carries me to Chivasso is much shorter, just a few minutes’ drive from Turin, where I live and work. I turn to Mary Poppins thanks to the advice of a friend who works for the cooperative as an operator. After a series of introductory interviews I met Mary in April 2018. Time carried me to become her friend. Her white brother. That is what she calls me now when she has to introduce me to her friends.
In 2019, Mary leaves the project and starts a new life. A life not easy and full of difficulties, made of mistakes, steps forward, passions, pain, humiliation. A long bureaucratic path to regularization on Italian ground and the search for a job.
This is a small story about the world around her and her incredible story.
It’s the story of our friendship.
Mary poses for a portrait I took of her at the Sacra di San Michele. A place I absolutely wanted her to see given its strong spirituality. Sant’Ambrogio di Susa, February 2020.
Mary and Kate are getting ready for another birthday party for a friend of theirs who is in the Mary Poppins shelter project. Chivasso, July 2018.
Mary and her roommates during a birthday party for their friend’s daughter. Chivasso, May 2018.
Mary shows signs of Libya on her body, of the exploitation she was subjected to and the voodoo ritual she underwent before leaving for Europe. She has a story no different from the thousands of other girls imprisoned in hot spots and forced into prostitution to pay off the debt contracted for the journey. A debt tha strangles them and forces them to be trafficked. San Sebastiano da Po, May 2018.
With the arrival of 2022, it has been more than two years since Mary has been undocumented, officially illegal. So, we decide it is time to begin to find a way out of this state of slumber and malaise. Through old contacts in the hospitality world and a lawyer friend, Mary is placed in a new project. Turin, March 2022.
Mary jealously preserves this photo. It’s the only photo of her mum with her and her brother. Her mother unfortunately died when she was still a child and Mary grew up with her grandmother in a house outside the city. Chivasso, May 2018.
The first trial period, the first activated internship is officially over. It lasted six months. The tailoring job currently is the only way she can afford money to help pay her rent and everything else. Turin, February 2023.
Mary poses for a portrait in the room of her host cohousing. Turin, March 2023.
Federico Tisa – BIO From architectural studies to photography the step is short
Federico Tisa Turin. April 1982. In 2013, following a trip to Perugia, Federico fell in love with documentary photography and totally dedicated himself to this new direction, which became totalizing and inspiring. In 2015 he obtained a master’s degree at the Italian Institute of Photography in Milan. He continued his studies in photojournalism in Rome, where he completed a master’s degree in photojournalism in 2017, focusing on the use of photography as a means of communication dedicated to an anthropological narrative and the development of medium- and long-term projects. His work explores the human condition from a broad perspective, with a focus on the social and cultural context. Since 2017, Federico has been working as an independent photographer and his work is published by national and international magazines.
