Horizons of the Unknown brings together photographers whose work navigates the shifting territories between the visible and the unseen, the personal and the collective. This exhibition moves beyond surface aesthetics to embrace the power of images as vessels of memory, identity, and social commentary.

Through themes of identity, memory, migration, gender, and cultural heritage, the artists chart landscapes that are both intimate and expansive. Some works draw from deep autobiographical moments, revealing private worlds of longing, resilience, and transformation. Others engage with broader cultural and political realities, confronting questions of displacement, belonging, and the reimagining of tradition.

Here, the horizon is not merely a line in the distance but a metaphor for the unknown paths that lie ahead — the untold stories, the overlooked histories, the silent voices waiting to be heard.

Each photograph becomes a threshold, inviting the viewer to cross into unfamiliar terrain, to question what is known, and to reimagine what might be possible.

In this way, Horizons of the Unknown is both a journey and a dialogue — between artist and audience, between past and future, between what we see and what we have yet to understand.

Exhibition Details

Opening Night: 9 October, 6 – 8 PM
Location: 59 Flinders St. Surry Hills

Curator: Farideh Zariv
Guest of Honour: Sandy Edwards

Participating Artists

Alireza (Ali) Nasseri (b. 1975, Iran) is an Iranian/Australian artist who uses analogy documentary photography techniques to create thematic work that express the emotions of freedom and rebellion. Migrating to Australia with his family at the age of seven, Nasseri later studied Economics and Law at the Australian National University and subsequently worked as a solicitor at the Crown Solicitors Office until the age of thirty.

For the past two decades, he has devoted himself to photography, building a career that spans both artistic and commercial practice. His commercial commissions have come from some of Australia’s most recognisable brands including: Qantas, Westpac, and TAL as well as boutique agencies and clients, while his personal projects have resulted in publication of 5 books including The Memoirs of Wernard Wright" (self-published) "Bondi Republic" (Allen & Unwin) and "Today is to Dance" (ArthousePress).

Now fifty, Nasseri presents his artistic work under his birth name, Alireza Nasseri, to symbolise the journey of identity. His photographs are created exclusively on 35mm black & white film shot on Leica cameras, developed and printed, by hand, by Nasseri, a process that is raw and integral to the artwork.

The photographic series "Freedom and Rebellion" is currently in production to be published late 2026.

Freedom and Rebellion is a photographic series that explores the individuals claim authenticity in a world that demands conformity. In production for 15 years the series unifies photographs  from Kings Cross nightclubs in 2010, Burlesque shows at Hubets, the infamous Frankie's Pizza, surf, skate, music, car and beach culture to a common theme. The photographs trace the connection between freedom and rebellion in both defiance and play. They celebrate those who walk their own path, finding identity and belonging in resistance, in joy, and in unity.

Dr Amin Palangi is an award-winning filmmaker, artist, and cultural producer, recognised for intimate and visually compelling portraits of people in extreme circumstances. His debut feature documentary, Love Marriage in Kabul, won the Sydney Film Festival Audience Award and Best Direction from the Australian Directors Guild, and has been broadcast in over twenty-six countries. His recent feature, Tennessine, was released in cinemas in 2024 and is currently streaming on SBSONDEMAND.

Amin is also an accomplished visual artist, with solo and group exhibitions in Australia, China, and the UAE. His work bridges art and storytelling, exploring culture, identity, and human resilience.

He teaches screen production at UNSW and directing at AFTRS and has contributed to the Australian screen industry through advisory and jury roles.

As founder and director of the Persian Film Festival Australia since 2011, Amin has built a vibrant platform for cross-cultural dialogue and artistic exchange.

This series of photographs, taken in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016, documents fleeting moments, faces, streets, and landscapes now vanished or altered beyond recognition. They are fragments of lives lived in the shadow of impermanence, where laughter and struggle shared the same air.

 

What remains here are echoes: a child’s gaze, a marketplace at dusk, the dust rising after footsteps. The people and places may no longer exist, yet through these images they continue to breathe—reminding us that memory can hold what time and history erase.

Born in 1982 in Tehran, Iran. I approach photography through a multidisciplinary lens, shaped by studies in engineering, architecture and practices in graphic design and painting. Architecture has profoundly influenced the structure and context of my images, while design and painting have refined my sense of composition, colour, and visual rhythm. My work engages with themes of culture, identity, and the dualities of urban existence—light and shadow, presence and absence, order and chaos. Through these explorations, the city becomes both canvas and character, a living organism shaped by me, memory, and human presence.

Scars

Tehran; an architectural palimpsest, a layered manuscript, where each new structure writes over the past. Tehran embodies this identity, where ancient traces whispering beneath the bold lines of the present. An amalgam of past, present and unwritten future.

 

Mirage

Living on the margins of the central Persian desert—places where architecture, light, and silence shape a distinct way of life. There is a subtle harmony between people and their harsh yet poetic environment, and I am drawn to the quiet resilience of these landscapes.

 

Peace Shadow

A threshold between reality and abstrac on is traversed, where imagination is awakened, narratives drift beyond the frame, and the ordinary is transfigured into art, as daily life unfolds itself as a living canvas.

I’m looking at the world through a different lens and focusing on the natural side of life. You’ll find me photographing while bushwalking or standing about gazing at trees. Shooting with an infrared converted camera means I constantly find joy in unexpected places. My images depict the unseen, a world hovering on the edge of our reality. My photography is taking me on a journey, questioning and testing my view of the world. I am fascinated with the invisible world revealed to me through infrared photography.

There are ghosts here, memories of what was and hope for the future. These multiple exposure images of regenerated bushland, taken around the Inner West’s Greenway, herald a time when these trees will be more densely packed. They are a thank you to the volunteers that work tirelessly to bring this vision to fruition, despite humanity’s present course, ravaging this planet. When will the balance shift? Will our now densely populated urban areas be reclaimed once more by nature?

Georges obsession for light, shape, form and reflection is paramount in his visual practice. He is widely recognised for both his professional portraiture and fine art practice. With a career spanning more than two decades Fetting’s artistic practice draws deeply on his lifelong connection to the ocean, exploring abstract seascapes that blur the line between photography and painting. A theme that explores time, motion, fluid and space - a body of work that evokes a sense of mystery and movement. Luminous and radiant these images often evoke a sense of fluid skies and etheric seas. He is also a multi award winning portrait photographer with eight of his works hanging in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra including Lee Lin Chin, David Gulpulil and Adam Cullen.

I have arrived at a photographic style that involves multiple exposures, intentional camera movement and other creative techniques, including the use of specialist and vintage lenses.

My photographs start their lives as either colour or black and white digital images. I work with them to create monochromatic, or subdued colour works. Printing is an important part of my image making process. As I also make some images into encaustic works or handmade books, the physical object becomes even more important.

My images rarely depend for understanding on location, rather they offer a space where the viewer can decide what they are seeing for themselves. To borrow a line from Eric Bogle, I like to  ‘… leave blank spaces for people’s minds to fill in for themselves …’

Water seems to seep into many of my images. Other parts of the natural world also lurk here. 

I want to engage imagination, memories, emotions, ask questions rather than provide answers. The question is paramount.

All may not be as it seems…

Lily Story

Summer’s peaceful hush
Water shimmers dark shadows play
Night closes soft petals

At the end of summer, a lone waterlily emerges, brave and bright. Photographed with a specialist lens, the endless reflections of trees may suggest a whole new underwater world of plants and creatures of the wetland. 

Winter symphony

Sandy shores lie still
Waves play with birds light sparkles
Endless rocks stand strong 

Beaches are waves and sand … but rocks are the foundation. This image is a double exposure, and includes two versions of rocks … the strong and silent headland, then the shapes and textures of a small element of rocks exposed by the endless tide.

Silent feet

Endless waves quietly 
Silent feet along the sand
Winter’s quiet hush

As I walk along the beach, camera working, I look for the shapes of receding waves. Birds, people who are sometimes also board riders, visit. Almost all leave footprints in the sand. Technically referred to as works made using intentional camera movement, I intend these photographs to offer ideas and thoughts. Often the image excludes, sometimes includes. The result is often a surprise.

Saeed “Pink” Sourati began photographing at the age of 18 with a Canon AE-1, discovering early on that the camera could be more than a tool of documentation—it could be a brush to paint with. Rooted in a love of colour, inspired by the meaning of his family name, Sourati’s work approaches photography as a form of impressionistic expression, where light and time blur into painterly surfaces. His fine art practice often employs slow shutter and experimental techniques to transform the ordinary into layered visions of memory and emotion.

In works such as The Space of Disappearance, he explores the tension between presence and absence, reality and reflection. Through fractured mirrors, shifting identities, and elusive gestures, Sourati invites viewers into a liminal space where perception bends and thoughts can be both held and seen.

In these photographs, the body becomes both present and absent, suspended between reality and reflection. What is held in the frame is not a fixed identity but a shifting apparition—something that can be touched, yet never fully grasped. The mirror fractures and reassembles perception, turning gesture into illusion and presence into disappearance. 

Sevak Babakhani is an Iranian-born photographic artist of Armenian descent whose work explores themes of identity, memory, and belonging. Born in Iran, he migrated at the age of 12 —an early displacement that continues to inform his artistic vision. Drawing from his Armenian heritage and diasporic experience, Sevak creates evocative images that blur the line between documentary and conceptual photography. His work reflects on cultural resilience and the personal dimensions of migration, offering visual narratives that are both intimate and universal.

Based in Australia, Sevak has worked as a commercial photographer for over 30 years, developing a refined visual language and technical mastery that deeply inform his artistic practice. Alongside his commercial career, he remains committed to storytelling through fine art photography, using the medium to reflect on identity, memory, and the meaning of home. His work invites viewers into quiet, contemplative spaces where personal and collective histories converge.

Immersing myself in photography in retirement I’ve had time and opportunity to develop a style that reflects what I feel when I look through the viewfinder.

I have always been drawn to more abstract artists and I find that my subjects and ideas in photography are influenced by what I enjoy in the broader art world.

I am particularly attracted to the understated, the hidden, the overlooked. Black and white imagery speaks more powerfully to me when I am imagining a concept. Although colour can be addictive, it is when I remove it from my work that I see an idea more clearly.

Living in the World Heritage Blue Mountains, I love spending time in our natural environment, but it is not the big vistas I see, but the smaller, more subtle parts of this world. When I travel it is the snippets of other cultures that I am drawn to and try to bring home through my lens.

Others have said it better than me, but as a photographer, my camera and my printer are like my brushes and paint.

Sina Arbabzadeh is a Sydney-based photographer whose journey with the medium began in 2005. Drawn to photography’s unique power to translate emotion into image, he studied film photography at the Iranian Artist Forum (part of the Hozeh Honari organisation) in his hometown of Isfahan. Alongside his career as a professional civil engineer, he has continued to pursue his creative passions in both photography and music.

Sina’s practice centres on capturing the poetry of everyday life, ranging from candid street moments to cultural and environmental narratives. Over time, he has developed a distinctive style that plays with blur, light, and shadow, inspired by the words of surrealist master André Kertész: “I write with light.”

Artworks