Why Don’t You Dance
Hannah Darabi
Kodoji Press and Photo Elysée
English, French and Persian (Farsi)
Softcover
204 pages
210 x 275 mm
2026
ISBN 9783037471319
Winner of the 2025 Prix Elysée, selected by a jury of international experts, Hannah Darabi unveiled her ongoing project Why Don’t You Dance? at the Photo Elysée booth. The artist explores dance as a cultural element whose meaning can evolve according to social and political circumstances. This original project was exhibited at Photo Elysée in June 2026 and is published by Kodoji Press.
(Source: https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/hannah-darabiwhy-don-t-you-dance)
About the Artist
Hannah Darabi was born in 1981 in Tehran. She studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts in her native city before continuing her education at Université Paris 8 Vincennes–Saint-Denis. Now based in Paris, she focuses mainly on her country of origin, exploring its social, cultural and political dynamics through images, videos and archive materials. In 2022, Darabi was awarded the Bernd and Hilla Becher Award by the City of Düsseldorf for her entire artistic output. The following year, she received the Prix de la Photo Madame Figaro for her exhibition at the Rencontres d’Arles. Her writings and works are held in various public and private collections. Her book Rue Enghelab: The Revolution Through Books, Iran 1979–1983 (Spector Books/Le Bal, 2019) has received several awards. In 2021, the Centre d’art GwinZegal published Soleil of Persian Square, an investigation into the lifestyle and popular music of the Iranian diaspora in Southern California.
https://elysee.ch/exhibitions/hannah-darabi-why-dont-you-dance
(Source: https://www.instagram.com/hannahdarabi)
About the Publisher
Kodoji Press is an independent publishing house focused on contemporary art and photography based in Switzerland.
https://www.kodoji.com
https://randominstitute.org/art/kodoji-press
Photo Elysée is one of the most important museums entirely dedicated to the photographic medium. Each year, we produce demanding exhibitions, distribute reference editorial content, conceive innovative events and offer events open to all. Since its creation in 1985 as a “museum for photography”, Photo Elysée has been questioning the permanent reinvention of the medium through the great figures who have marked its history by imagining new ways of seeing or making people see, while revealing in a privileged way the emerging photography which, through unseen views, bears witness to the world of today and prefigures that of tomorrow. In other words: to cover all the subjects of photography, to discover them sometimes, and above all to make them rediscovered.
https://elysee.ch/en
(Source: https://elysee.ch/en/museum)
