Mahan Abasian (b. 1991, Tehran) is a photographer and artist whose practice moves between street documentary and physical intervention on the photographic print. Since 2013, he has photographed Tehran's daily life — its streets, its margins, its unremarkable moments — building an archive that he continues to return to, years after the images were taken, with needle and thread. His ongoing project 12,497 Knots (2013–present) is the centre of this practice: street photographs of Tehran intervened upon by hand embroidery directly on the photographic surface, sometimes years after the original image was made. The gap between the shutter and the stitch is not incidental — it is material. Twenty-seven works from the series were exhibited at the 6th Biennial of Contemporary Iranian Art, Mall Galleries, London (2026). Abasian's background spans theatre, short film, documentary cinematography, and music — a cross-disciplinary foundation that informs a practice built around sustained presence, slow return, and the conviction that a photograph is not finished when it is taken. He lives and works in Tehran.
