Biography:

1st day of Autumn 1948 :  Birth of Zahra Kazemi, Shiraz.

At age two, her father died. Her mother remarried and her father renamed her Ziba.

1969-72: Ziba studies film directing at the Superior School of Television and Cinema in Tehran.

1974: She leaves for France where she works for the Paris branch of Iranian television.

1969-1988: She writes, directs and participates in the production of numerous films, both fiction and documentary, in Iran as well as in France.

1985: Ziba received her doctorate in Arts and Literature (Diplôme d'études approfondies des Arts et Lettres mention Sociology, D.E.A), University of Paris VIII.

1993: Ziba immigrates to Canada and specializes in photography, a passion to which she will devote herself entirely.

1995: Ziba begins the first of many trips around the world as a photojournalist.  She dedicates herself to raise consciousness about the human condition. Her photos speak of human nature and dignity in the midst of exodus, poverty, humiliation, suffering, and the ravages of war. To be as close to the facts as possible, she often lived with families, inside and outside, refugee camps.

1995-1998: She travels to the Ivory Cost, Mexico, Costa-Rica, and Haiti respectively after which Ziba starts documenting the Middle East.

2001-2002: In Palestine and Israel, and the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Ziba photographs the daily life of Palestinians and the problems they face as they try to preserve their land and identity.

In Afghanistan, she visits and documents conditions in refugee camps, schools and prisons.  Her photographs and articles reveal the extent to which she was moved by the plight of women and children.

In Iran, she paid homage to the Persian woman, ‘‘who, in order to preserve her identity, has been engaged for twenty years, without support, in a battle of exceptional subtlety’’. –Ziba

May-June 2003: Ziba returned to Iraq for the second time after 2002 where she covered the American invasion of the country and its civilians.

In order to wait for her visa for Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, the countries which were next on her itinerary, she crossed the border to Iran. Waiting for these visas, she carried out her very last photo reportages.

Her very last one was in front of the Evin prison: we will most certainly not see these images from Ziba.