About

Silk Road Gallery was founded in Tehran in 2001 as the first gallery in Iran devoted to photography.

The early 2000s were a turning point for photography in Iran. The press had gained new freedoms, articles were printed with pictures, and a generation of photographers was finding its own voice somewhere between document and art. Silk Road opened to give that work a room of its own, and to introduce Iranian photography to audiences at home and abroad.

Over two decades the gallery has presented close to two hundred exhibitions and has worked with photographers across several generations, from Bahman Jalali and Mohsen Rastani to Shadi Ghadirian, Jalal Sepehr and the artists who came after them. Since 2004 it has taken Iranian photography to Paris Photo and to museums, institutions and private collections around the world.

From 2026, Silk Road is an online gallery. Exhibitions open as viewing rooms on this site, the archive of past shows stays open to everyone, and every work can be inquired about directly. Most works are also available as archival pigment prints, made by a fine-art laboratory in France and delivered with a certificate of authenticity.

The gallery is directed by its founder, Anahita Ghabaian.