Photographer and filmmaker Omid Razavi discusses his artistic path—and past—delving into his intimate relationship with art.
Omid Razavi is a photographer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, California. Born in Tehran, Iran, Razavi came to America to study film against the wishes of his family and has since carved out a life for himself as an artist with a focus on telling the stories of disabled people in front of and behind the camera.
Shutterstock: How did you first become interested in photography and film?
Omid Razavi: I was born with Cerebral Palsy, so half my body is paralyzed and I suffer from severe muscle spasticity.
As a kid, growing up in Tehran, I wasn’t able to run and play the games other kids played because of the pain [my condition caused], so I spent the majority of my time at home, watching movies.
I told my parents I wanted to make movies, but they said, “We don’t need an artist in the family.” They wanted me to study computers or medicine, but I was always bad at mathematics.
SSTK: What do your parents do?
Razavi: My father is an architect with two PhDs and my mother is a retired social worker. All my cousins have PhDs, so it’s like I’m the only person in my family without one.
SSTK: So, you defied them and went to film school anyway?
Razavi: Not right away. I wanted to make films, but my friend told me that the first step to becoming a great filmmaker was learning about photography. Photography is the basis of filmmaking, he told me, so I borrowed my father’s camera and started taking pictures.
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SSTK: He let you borrow his camera?
Razavi: He didn’t know I borrowed it. One day, he came looking for it and asked me if I had seen it. I said, “No. Never.”
The camera belonged to the university where he taught and he ended up having to pay for it.
SSTK: When did you start taking classes?
Razavi: No one thought I could do it, so, at first, I taught myself. I’d do my own experiments and then I’d look at the photos, find the problems, then take the picture again and try to fix them.
Eventually, I took a six-month crash course in photography at a school in Tehran, where I learned about lights and filters and things like that, although most of the lessons were things I’d already taught myself.
I really wanted to be a filmmaker, though, so I decided to leave Iran and enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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SSTK: That’s an incredibly prestigious school, but I don’t necessarily think of it as a destination for wannabe filmmakers.
Razavi: Yes, they are much more focused on experimental art and theory, rather than the practicalities of making movies, So, during the summers, I took film courses at UCLA.
After a couple years, I transferred my credits to the California College of the Arts, where I got my degree in filmmaking, before moving to LA.
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SSTK: And yet, most of your work is in photography, not film, right?
Razavi: Well, making a film requires a lot of other people and it is very physically demanding. I really wanted to be a cinematographer, but my disability makes it impossible to handle the equipment.
Photography is very close to cinematography and is something I can do more independently. And, I love the way you can tell a story with a single photograph.
For a while, I thought I would focus on behind-the-scenes and key art photography—and I’d still like to do more of that work—but over time, I became more and more interested in portrait photography. And, being a member of the disability community, I became interested in creating work around that.
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SSTK: What has it been like working with Shutterstock via The Create Fund?
Razavi: It has really allowed me to collaborate more and to create more work around people with disabilities.
After I got the grant, I really started looking at the videos on Shutterstock to see what was missing there and I noticed a lack of content around people with physical disabilities, particularly in sports and entertainment.
SSTK: What is your dream for the future?
Razavi: I really would like to do more key art photography and behind-the-scenes photography. And, of course, my real dream has always been to be a filmmaker. But, I think it happens in life that, along the way to one dream, you find that maybe you are better at other things or that you are able to do what you want in a different way.
As I’ve shifted my attention more and more towards photography, I’ve realized that I am still able to tell the stories I want to tell, just with a single picture. And, in a way, I think photography is more accessible than film because it can be consumed anywhere, at any time, and I love that.
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