Fereydoun Ave once commented that his series Endangered Species (2003) is about closure, the end of a cycle. Based on a historical portrait of three generations of his own family, this series captures something of a theatrical nostalgia for Iranian Zoroastrian culture and for a style and quality of life that no longer exists in the Middle East. The portraits suggest an epic, family-drama soap opera, and have the feel of film posters from the 1940s and 50s, as well as cinematic effects such as fade-ins and fade-outs.

After studying film and theatre studies in America, Ave worked as an artistic director and designer in Iran during the early 1970s – the boom days when it was an international centre for creative projects. Although he now works mainly with photography, painting and collage, theatre and cinema still often influence his work.

Ave’s family, like many other Iranian Zoroastrian families, is scattered the world over. Zoroastrianism was once the dominant religion of much of greater Iran, and an important influence on the region’s history and traditions. Under the Pahlavi dynasty (1925–79) the Zoroastrian community gained recognition as part of a progressive trend in Iran. After the Iranian Revolution of 1979 – during which the Shah was deposed and the Pahlavi dynasty brought to an end – many Zoroastrians moved abroad, and followers of the religion in Iran became an endangered species.

The Iranian writer and friend of Ave’s, Goli Taraghi, whose writing captures something of the spirit of Ave’s portraits, commented on a recent trip to some Zoroastrian villages in Yazd, Iran:

I was surprised to find that nothing and no one was left except empty streets, shut doors and windows. And silence, a sad and ominous silence. An old woman was sitting in front of a door, seemingly drowned in old memories. She was unable to speak. In another alley a voice was reciting ‘Avesta’ [the Zoroastrian religious text] behind a closed door. A man standing at the end of a street told me that all his children were gone and that the entire population of the village hardly exceeded ten.

Fereydoun Ave has witnessed the disintegration of his own family and fears the extinction of a culture, a generation. As these nostalgic portraits suggest, an era has come to an end and there can be no return to the past.

However, Endangered Species was also influenced by Chinese ancestral portraits, which Ave collects, with their stylized format, rows of people piled on top of each other, and the way that each branch of the family has a flower (flowers have also featured in much of Ave’s work). Many Chinese people have a profound connection to their ancestors, believing that the power of the living person resides in their portrait after death. Death does not sever a person’s relationship with the living and, if properly worshipped and honoured in private family rituals, the spirits of ancestors can bring health, long life, prosperity and children who will someday similarly honour their parents. Fereydoun Ave’s Endangered Species may be nostalgic and melancholy but, as the Chinese ancestral portraits would have us believe, it is not without hope.