PEJ BEHDARVAND

Born in Tehran, Pej Behdarvand moved to Hollywood, California at the impressionable age of 4 years old. With the desire for exploration, he entered college to study international relations, but was quickly sidetracked by a class in filmmaking. Pej started to show his movies domestically at festivals while still studying film at San Francisco Art Institute where he received his B.F.A.

After earning his degree he found himself assisting a photographer and was charmed by the simplicity and immediate intimacy that the craft of photography offered. His first portfolio pieces landed him into the American Photography Annual as well as initiating his career in commercial photography with such clients as Entertainment Weekly and The New York Times Magazine.

His personal work has been in group and solo exhibitions both domestically and internationally and has received recognition from Communication Arts, Prix de la Photographie, and International Photography Awards. Currently, he resides and works in California and Mexico.

Despite the project name, the images of these salvaged cars photographed by Pej Behdarvand are not documented in direct allusion to the deathbeds of humans, morgues, or even crime-scene photos.
When Behdarvand stepped foot into the auto junkyard world, with its churchly order of rows upon rows of irreparable machines, he was entering a kind of purgatory.
The vehicles in this photo series are depicted as if museum objects, yet unlike museum objects these wrecked cars are not to be physically preserved intact for posterity, but will be crushed for reuse in another form.
The photo is the only document of the auto in this unique, temporary state: after its useful life, before it is reincarnated into recyclable material.
What information is captured in these images?
A glimpse of the nebulous phase of a manmade thing, with remnants of brand choice and societal status, with evidence of family and pride, categorized indifferently with grease-pencil marks. In Deathbed, the photo is a relic, a relic of a car relinquished to the junkyard to be held until it is no longer a car.