Biography
Shirin Town is a London-based contemporary photographic artist.
Shirin studied traditional photography during secondary education before developing an independent, self-taught practice. She spent several years working in film and television, before subsequently working independently as a professional reportage photographer.
Born in Sydney, Australia to an English father and Iranian mother, she lived in Sydney, Tehran, London and Perth all before commencing elementary school. This nomadic, cross-cultural upbringing shapes her work - grounding her unique imagery in the expression of her memories and emotions.
Since beginning to exhibit her fine-art work publicly for the first time in 2025, Town has received international recognition including First Place in the Photomanipulation category of the 2026 Minimalist Photography Awards, and Photographer of the Year at the 7th International Festival of Surrealist & Creative Photography in Fréjus, France. Her work has also received recognition from the FotoSlovo Awards and has been exhibited in galleries in London, Wales, Kent and France.
Artist’s Statement
Shirin Town's photographs begin with a feeling or memory, rather than a fixed narrative. Working with photographs she has taken herself, she combines layers of images through meticulous compositing to create scenes that exist somewhere between the recognisable and the impossible. They are not intended to illustrate a particular story; they operate as symbolic spaces in which meaning remains open to both artist and viewer.
Shirin is interested in the layered nature of deep emotions. Her process allows different emotional states to occupy a single image, creating visual worlds in which seemingly contradictory feelings can exist simultaneously.
Although each photograph is highly deliberate in construction, Shirin uses intuition to shape the final work. An initial idea may evolve significantly during the making, and often it is not until completion that an image will reveal its true meaning. This tension between control and surrender is fundamental to her practice.
Shirin uses her own body not simply as a subject, but as a means of examining the relationship between inner experience and the person presented to the outside world. Her photographs form an evolving visual record of the self: less a chronological autobiography than a collection of emotional and psychological states.
Often drawing on the visual language of surrealism, Shirin constructs worlds in which the familiar becomes unstable. Her images invite viewers to recognise something of themselves within that uncertainty, while leaving space for meanings that belong entirely to the individual looking.
info@shirintown.com
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