Mona Sartoveh is an Iranian photographer based in Boston whose work explores memory, loss, belonging, and the quiet search for self.

For Sartoveh, photography is less a way of documenting the world than a way of understanding it. Through her images, she traces the lives, relationships, and fleeting moments that shape us, drawn to what remains unspoken—to the spaces between presence and absence, remembering and forgetting, holding on and letting go.

Influenced by experiences of love, grief, migration, and motherhood, her work has become increasingly personal in recent years. Photography serves as both a creative practice and a means of reflection, returning again and again to questions of identity, connection, and the passage of time.

Her photographs are small acts of preservation—attempts to hold on to what time inevitably carries away. Rather than offering answers, they invite reflection on memory, loss, and the ways our histories continue to live within us. Through photography, She seeks not certainty, but connection, and the fragile light that endures long after a moment has passed.

​

​

Exhibitions

• 2026

- Uprooted/Transplanted - Stories of Displacement , “HUNTER” NAVE Gallery , Somerville , MA .  May1 -June 14, 2026​

• 2025

-"Gathering Place | A Family Album" Presented by The Griffin Museum of Photography ,On view at the Jenks Center, Winchester, MA ,October 1 – January 3, 2026

-SXSW , "Become the Breakthrough" CareAccess , Austin , TX
-The installation "Mirrors" at Brookline Book smith , Brookline , MA

• 2024

-Shortlisted and featured in the Recount Photography Agora Exhibition ,

entry "HOME", Tunis , Tunisia , North Africa

-Maine Museum of PhotographicArts , FIGURATIVE - The Body as Language ,  “HUNTER” , Portland, Maine.

-Displacement, stories of migration, "Pertaining to Losses" , City Hall e, Boston

-VCP 2024 Open Juried Exhibition , “HUNTER”  , Vermont Center for

Photography,Vermont

-The body as protest Exhabition , “HUNTER”  , SomArt(Somerville art council), Somerville

-LCB Depot’s to be part of FORMAT24 Festival, “HUNTER”  , London​​

• 2023

-The Fay Chandler Emerging Art Awards & Exhabition,entry“HUNTER” , City Hall, Boston

-LCB Depot’s , entry "HOME" , to be part of FORMAT23 following the theme 

What Photography Can Be , London​

• 2018
-A Group Photography Exhibition,entry "Unity in difference" Espace Beaurepaire, 28 rue beaurepaire, Paris, France

-TIFA, A Group Photography Exhibition,entry "Unity in difference "

CA Gallery, Tokyo ​

• 2017

-A Group Photography Exhibition , “Tehran Identity” , Hooner House Gallery , Tehran

-9th Pollux Awards International photography Exhibition “Unseen”, Galeria Valid Foto , Barcelona , Spain

-TIFA , A Group Photography Exhibition “Unseen” CA Gallery , Tokyo​

• 2016

IPA, A Group photography Exhibition “Hidden”, New York​

• 2015

-1PIX Group/4th photo group Exhibition, Zemestan Gallery, Iranian Artist Forum,Tehran

-The 2nd Celebration Of Iranian Still Photographers , Museum of the Qasr Prison,Tehran​

• 2011

The first Photo Exhibition Special Economic Free Zones Iran/Entitled "Caspian to the Persian Gulf" ,Tehran​

• 2010

Theatre Photography contest of views "about the revelation at a party off" , Iranian Artist Forum, Tehran​

• 2007

-Photo exhibition workshops’ Iran’s theater , Tehran

-The Tenth biennial Iran’s photos , Tehran​

• 2006

-Snow raining without noise (Photo Performance) , Performed at the Main building of City Theater of Tehran ,Tehran

-Wind blows every where it wants(Photo Performance),Performed at Saad Abad Gallery ,Tehran

-The second Festival press photo of Kaveh Golestan , Tehran

-Aks Negareh Ha , SilkRoadGallery ,Tehran​

• 2005

The First Festival press photo of Kaveh Golestan , Tehran​

• 2004

Desve lada , Mirada de fotografas ironies ,Madrid ,Spain​

• 2003

-Journalist women’s Radiancy , Aks khaneh shahr, Tehran

-The first Festival Photo handicrafts Iran ,Blue Hall of Niavaran Palace , Tehran

-The ninth biennial Iran’s photos ,Tehran