nikol faridani

Posted by hamid (tehran, Iran) on 10 February 2008 in People & Portraits.

TEHRAN -- Iranian photographer of dessert terrains Nikol Faridani died on Wednesday at his home, beside his photos and cameras. He was 72.

He suffered from prostate cancer, pneumonia, and Parkinson’s disease.

Faridani was born in 1935 in Shiraz. His family moved to Isfahan when he was two and he completed his elementary education at the Shah Abbas School in Jolfa. Then they moved to Tehran and later to Kerman, and ultimately returned to Tehran in 1955.

It was in the desert city of Kerman where he first held a camera in his hands and hunted for the scenery of nature.

In Tehran, he worked for a construction company near Mehrabad Airport when he heard that an Italian company working for the Iranian Oil Company was hiring. He was hired and worked for the company for four years, doing everything related to photography.

He was later transferred to the Oil Consortium, where he worked for another 15 years and gained experience in aerial photography, geological photography, and photomicrography. He logged over 300 hours in the air as an aerial photographer.

He quit in 1975 and started his own business, where he discovered the million-square-mile studio that is the Iranian Plateau. From then on, he spent all his time taking shots of every corner of the plateau.

Faridani spent his last years at home with his photographer wife Monireh Soltani.