Maryam Ghasempour

Maryam Ghasempour is a researcher, photojournalist, activist, and MFA candidate in Photography at Kansas State University.

• If your photography could speak, what would it say about you?

My photography would say that I am a woman who carries many memories and distances inside her. It would say I am always searching for connection, with my family, my motherland, and the landscapes that remind me of home. It would say I am soft but strong, emotional but observant, and that I try to hold small moments of beauty before they disappear. My images would say that I am a traveler, an immigrant, and a woman who uses her camera to understand herself and the world around her.

• Is there a place or environment where you feel most yourself as a photographer?

I feel most myself when I am among people and taking their photos and when I am in nature. In documentary work, being with people, listening to their stories, seeing their real life, feeling their present, is very precious for me. When someone trusts me and shares a piece of their world, I feel a responsibility to show it honestly. These stories need to be told, and photography gives them a voice.

And in nature, I feel the same kind of truth but in a softer way. Light, wind, silence, they also speak. Both people and nature give me moments that must be seen, moments that remind me why I photograph.

• What is the most meaningful photo you have ever taken, and why?

I can’t choose only one. Many of my photos carry meaning for me. But if I talk about a body of work that stays with me, it is the photographs I made in Iran, especially of working women, older women, women living quiet but powerful everyday lives. Documenting them felt important. Being with them, seeing their strength, and recording their reality was full of meaning for me. Those moments of connection, me seeing them, and their feeling seen, are something I never forget.

• If you could describe your photography in one feeling, what would it be?

Connection.The thing that ties us to life, a memory, a face, a story, a moment that keeps us going.Even in my documentary work, I always saw how women held onto something small but powerful to continue, a habit, a belief, a hope. I think my photography feels like that: a soft attachment to life that let us move forward, even in difficult times.

• And finally — from the photographs exhibited in Decagon, is there one that holds personal meaning for you?

Yes, Silent Bloom. It shows my own shadow on a wall, like a frame from a film that suddenly stopped. The darkness and clarity of the figure, the Iranian handwriting, the clock, the shadow of the flower, all of them feel like pieces of my migration story. Quiet, half-visible, but growing.This photograph is meaningful for me because it feels like my own journey as a woman, trying to grow in silence, trying to bloom in a place that is not easy to grow, carrying memories and language inside my shadow.