West Chapter ConferenceSpeakers

Fatemeh Fani

Saturday, November 08, 2025 @ 10:40am, 3824 Main St, Riverside, CA 92501

I Wasn't Asked

Fatemeh Fani (b. 1992, Iran) is an MFA student in Photography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She holds a B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from AUM and a B.A. in Photography from the Tehran University of Art. She is the recipient of the 2023 Glenn R. Allen Graduate Student Scholarship, the 2024 Graduate Student Creative Arts Award, the 2025 Lyman S.V. Judson and Ellen Mackechnie Judson Graduate Student Award, and the 2025-2026 University of Wisconsin-Madison Graduate Studies Fellowship.

Fatemeh is a documentary photographer, researcher, and activist. Her work focuses on women, sexual minorities, and immigrants, highlighting how these groups are deprived of fundamental rights and freedom of expression in traditional societies such as Iran. Upon immigrating to the United States, as an Iranian woman who has always been both a victim and a witness of restriction and discrimination, she found herself intricately positioned between two disparate worlds--navigating the complexities of dual identities and divergent life experiences. This intersection has fostered a profound sense of emotional and identity ambivalence, leaving her suspended between the tether of her country of origin and the place she now calls home. Fatemeh is documenting the essence of America through the lens of an outsider--an individual from an Islamic country with a distinct cultural background. She is also working with personal archival photographs, aiming to challenge the concept of the mandatory hijab and the stolen identity of Iranian women. Her goal is to raise awareness and draw attention to the ongoing restrictions, exclusions, and discriminations that affect a significant portion of her country's population, with particular focus on the challenges faced by women.