As a young man, photography artist Ramin Samandari went from oil country to oil country, emigrating from Iran to the Permian Basin thanks to a sponsoring relative who lived in Odessa.
After his home country had been roiled by the Islamic Revolution of the late 1970s, and with martial law declared in Samandari’s last year of high school, his family decided to send their young son away to study medicine in the United States. The plan was for Samandari to eventually return once things had settled.
Forty-five years later Samandari remains in Texas, having given up medicine to become a professional photographer, now a fixture in San Antonio art circles thanks to his ongoing series of portraits documenting the city’s artists and arts supporters.
Samandari was selected as the San Antonio Art League and Museum’s Artist of the Year for 2023 in part due to the notoriety of that series, titled San Antonio Faces of Art, and several of those portraits will be on view during his retrospective exhibition at the nonprofit museum in September.
“Ramin was selected overwhelmingly this year, which thrilled us because [he] has done so much for the arts in San Antonio,” said Lyn Belisle, San Antonio Art League and Museum board president.
Turning philosophical
Belisle was first introduced to Samandari’s work through his partner Deborah Keller-Rihn, also a photographer who affectionately called their 30-year relationship “a photographic love affair.”
Keller-Rihn said they met in part because of her admiration for his work, which she said described as emotive, richly textured and romantic, “but not in a syrupy way.”
Her favorite series is In Search of the Beloved, moody polaroid transfer prints of costumed figures in landscapes layered with quotes of the 13th-century Sufi mystic poet Rumi inscribed in Farsi. Another similar series was drawn from family photos Samandari retrieved during a trip to Iran in 2000.
Those also incorporate Rumi verses, such as “I was a particle / you made me greater than a mountain,” a phrase that evidences Samandari’s abiding interest in going beyond the merely visual in his imagery, having named his photography studio Magical Realism Studio.
“I don’t want to show what anybody can see with their own eyes. It’s an interpretation of reality,” he explained.
Unfortunately, he explained, only two images from that series remain. The rest were lost to water damage from a leaky pipe that ruined a significant portion of his archives, including an estimated 2,500 negatives that he’d intended to print.
Many were for a series with a title that became ironic — the Enigma series — given that the images will remain a mystery. However, he was able to salvage three dozen negatives, and one print will soon be on view in an upcoming Contemporary at Blue Star Red Dot fundraising sale.
‘A consummate photographer’
San Antonio almost lost Samandari himself when the artist had a severe heart attack in 2021. He is now diagnosed with second-stage congestive heart failure, the result of a 100% blockage and an 80% blockage in his coronary artery.
The experience has mellowed the 63-year-old Samandari, who quit smoking and now requires rest and less of his favorite Scotch. It also makes him grateful for the upcoming retrospective exhibition of 51 artworks spanning 22 years, which includes an illustrated catalog available for sale to the public.
Former San Antonio Museum of Art curator David Rubin wrote the catalog essay, originally published by Glasstire. In the essay, Rubin covers the wide range of subjects explored by Samandari, from traditional nudes and landscapes to street photography made in his native Tehran, which Rubin credits as “[pointing] out that there is more to Iran than just the media portrayal of protests, riots, and militaristic activity.” Instead, Samandari’s photos reveal everyday scenes, such as elderly men playing chess in a city park and children sledding in copious snow.
Samandari also photographed snowy San Antonio during Winter Storm Uri of 2021. Those images caught the eye of artist and San Antonio Art League Museum member Brian St. John, who nominated Samandari for the Artist of the Year distinction.
Among praise for Samandari’s work and presence in San Antonio, St. John said, “He’s prolific. He has a beautiful sense of composition and a wide range of thematic choices from the figure to the landscape to ‘Big Sky.’ … He’s a consummate photographer and artist.”
Too wild
When Samandari first arrived in Texas, he said “Nuke Iran” T-shirts were a common sight.
“In Odessa, it was not healthy to advertise you’re from Iran. I got really close to heavy situations several times,” Samandari said. “I tried to learn English as fast as I could, and as best as I could.” He watched movies, read books and talked to people, especially friends from outside Texas, during poker nights, eventually earning an indistinct accent.
“So when I talked to people, [they knew] I wasn’t a local — definitely I didn’t have the [Texas] accent — but they couldn’t tell I was a foreigner either,” he said.
The economic recession of the late 1980s hit West Texas hard, and Samandari relocated to take darkroom photography classes at San Antonio College. He started in photojournalism by working for the college newspaper, then worked for the San Antonio Express-News and San Antonio Light newspapers.
However, the romantic sensibilities his partner Keller-Rihn would eventually recognize were not appreciated by newspaper editors.
His photographic work “wasn’t satisfying to me or to them,” he said. “They called it artsy fartsy.”
He was given “wild art” assignments, when photojournalists are asked to keep an eye out for interesting happenings or perspectives on their city.
Still, his eye was too wild for the job. “I would photograph things that weren’t entirely in focus on the main subject, or introduce a slight blur into the picture. They said, ‘Look, this stuff is not for the newspaper,’” he said.
Those rejections led Samandari to take a job as a buyer for Half Price Books so he could pursue his own course, traveling occasionally back to Iran to reconnect with family and heritage, and making the images he believed in. A representative selection of the results will be on view in the two-story Victorian mansion of the San Antonio Art League and Museum from Sept. 24 through Nov. 4.
Summing up her observations of Samandari’s decades-long career, Keller-Rihn said, “He’s very disciplined and single-minded. His life purpose really is about photography. He’s completely about photography. I always admire that about him.”
