Photographer and filmmaker Mitra Tabrizian was born in Tehran in 1956 and lives and works in London. She has exhibited internationally and her films have been screened worldwide. Her large-scale photographs combine techniques more commonly utilised in documentary film-making to create elaborate, staged tableaux. Focusing on everyday, real-life situations, she invites local people to take part as actors, creating apparently realistic and mundane scenes. At the same time, the version of reality she presents is shot through with surreal detail and a strong allegorical content, commenting both on contemporary Iranian society and the universal human condition. While some of her work is set within Iran itself, other photographs and films follow the lives and struggles of those forced into exile. Recent work has become both more extreme in the situations it portrays and more highly polished in execution, and she depicts hope and determination as finally conquering despair.