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Mona Sartoveh

@mona.sartoveh

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Visual storyteller/ Photographer
Upcoming:
📍ShowUp Gallery Nov6-20
✨✨✨
The installation "Mirrors"
📍Booksmith ,Brookline,MA

POSTS STORIES REELS

My relationship with loss began when I was 23, when my mom passed away. She was very young, and my memory of her is still pure love.
Her death changed my family deeply. We tried so hard to protect each other from the pain that none of us ever truly faced our grief.
My father carried most of that burden, giving us even more love.
Thirteen years later, I lost him too — and that was the moment my family truly broke. We were three daughters who had been held and protected all our lives, and suddenly we were alone with emotions we didn’t know how to understand. I became lost. And soon after, one of my sisters stepped away from the family, and it felt like another loss.
Photography became the way I survived. It allowed me to look directly at my grief and move through it. I recreated moments that showed how heavy everything felt — the darkness, the emptiness, the silence. But even in the darkest moments, there is always a small line of light.
In losing the people who shaped me, I felt like a cord inside me was cut. But that breaking also created something new. I grew again, slowly, from the center of the darkness. I learned to stand.
For me, grief is not only pain.
Grief is a way of seeing love again.
Loss stopped me, but love helped me move.
This photograph shows that moment when darkness surrounds me, but I still find a small point of light — and I hold onto it. And from there, I begin to grow again.

This exhibition has also reminded me that the meaning of family is universal. No matter where we come from, the heart of family is built through love, memory, and the ways we hold each other through loss. I would also like to thank @c.w.dix , the director of the @griffinmuseum , for curating this exhibition with such a meaningful focus on family. by @mona.sartoveh

“When art becomes part of something bigger”

One of the most meaningful parts of my journey as an artist has been discovering how the work I love can contribute to something beyond the images themselves.

Over the past few years, my work with CareAccess has taken me into different communities, introduced me to extraordinary people, and deepened my understanding of the human side of medical research.

Research is about more than science and medicine. It’s about people, their stories, their hopes, and the possibility of a healthier future for generations to come.

The grand opening of the Clinical Trial Center by Walmart and Care Access in Houston marked an important milestone in that mission: bringing clinical research closer to communities and making opportunities for participation more accessible.

Being part of this moment, and seeing my photography and visual storytelling become part of the space through this installation, was especially meaningful to me.

I’ve always believed that art has the power to connect people, create understanding, and make us feel something. Seeing my work contribute to a larger effort to make a difference in people’s lives reminds me why I chose this path in the first place.

Perhaps that’s what makes these years with CareAccess so meaningful to me: knowing that what I create can have a purpose beyond the frame.

I’m grateful to be part of this journey and to have the opportunity to use my work to help build a bridge between people and science. 💚

Grand Opening | Walmart × CareAccess
Houston, Texas | October 2026

#CareAccess #Walmart #VisualStorytelling #ArtWithPurpose #ClinicalResearch by @mona.sartoveh

Some moments become more meaningful with time.
I had the privilege of meeting Uncle Charlie while spending time with Joe Small and his family, photographing their lives and the stories that connect generations.
I remember him surrounded by family photographs, holding a picture of his great-granddaughter, and sitting at the table on his 91st birthday. Just simple, everyday moments that say so much about someone’s life.
Charlie “Sonny” Roberts Sr. was almost 92. An engineer, an inventor, a musician, a father of ten, and part of a family with so much history and so many stories to tell.
Over the years, I’ve been welcomed into so many people’s homes and lives. And every time, I’m reminded that behind every face is a lifetime of memories, relationships, and stories worth remembering.
Sometimes, we don’t realize how much the moments we’re witnessing will mean to us until they become memories.
Looking at these photographs today, I’m especially grateful I had the chance to spend time with Uncle Charlie and his family.
People leave us, but something of them stays with us. In the people they loved, the stories they shared, and even in the quiet spaces they once filled.
Rest in peace, Uncle Charlie. 🤍
@joecollymoreactor , I’m so sorry for your loss. Sending so much love to you and your family.✨💫✨ by @mona.sartoveh

Boston Book Festival by @mona.sartoveh

Boston Book Festival by @mona.sartoveh

"Within"
I was born and raised in Iran, and much of my life has been shaped by leaving, losing, and starting over.
For a long time, home was a place to me — a country, a city, a house. Somewhere I belonged. Somewhere I could return to.
But over the years, that meaning has changed.
When I look at this photograph, I see lines crossing the sky, dividing the space, creating boundaries. And yet, the sky doesn’t stop there. It continues beyond them.
There is something deeply personal in that for me.
Life has taken me through different places, moments of loss, uncertainty, and beginning again. Somewhere along the way, I realized that I don’t have to leave one version of myself behind in order to become another.
They are all still within me.
The people I’ve loved. The places I’ve lived. My memories. My roots. The life I left behind and the life I’m building now.
These days, I feel closer to nature, to Mother Earth. I feel a sense of belonging there — something grounding, something that feels like home.
There are waves, and there is calm. There are boundaries, but life finds its way beyond them.
For me, home lives in what I carry within — all the versions of myself I’ve been along the way.
Home is within me.

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Such a lovely reception last night at Braitmayer Gallery, Tabor Academy. So happy to be part of this exhibition and collaboration. Thank you, @iaritzamenjivar , for bringing such great energy to it all.❤️ by @mona.sartoveh

If I could borrow just a few moments from time...I wouldn’t go back to being a child.I’d want to see my mother...before she became a mother.
I’d want to know what truly made her laugh.
What music she listened to when no one needed anything from her. What her silence sounded like when no one was calling her name. I’d want to see the dreams she had for her own life. The dreams that had nothing to do with me. The dreams she didn’t have to change for anyone else. The part of herself that still belonged only to her.
Somewhere along the way,
she quietly disappeared behind the role of being a mother. She was no longer just a young woman with her own dreams,
her own laughter,
her own hopes.
She became...
Mom.
It’s strange. As children, we only remember the woman who raised us. We rarely stop to wonder who she had to leave behind to become our mother.
What parts of herself she quietly let go of.
Which dreams.
Which hopes.
Which version of herself.
I’m sure there are parts of her I’ll never know.
The jokes she never told. The fears she never spoke about. The tears she waited to cry until I had fallen asleep.
Now that I’m older, I don’t miss my own childhood. I miss the years that quietly passed in her life.The years she’ll never get back.The years she gave to me, little by little.

No one prepares you for the day
you stop seeing your mother only as “Mom.”
The day you finally see her as a person, doing the best she could, just like the rest of us.
I don’t think what I owe my mother is gratitude for being perfect.
What I owe her is curiosity.
The willingness to ask who she was
before she became my mother.
Because before she was “Mom,”
she was a whole woman.
With dreams.
With fears.
With laughter.
And a world that belonged only to her.
If I were ever given that chance again,
I wouldn’t ask her how she raised me.
I’d ask her who she was.
Because somewhere along the way,
I forgot
that before she was my mother,
she had a life of her own.
She had dreams.
She had hopes.
And a world that belonged only to her.

Today marks 20 years since she left this world.And somehow, I’m still getting to know her! ✨💜✨

P.S. My mom at 22, before motherhood. Me with Alborz, after. by @mona.sartoveh

Some films connect with critics.Some quietly find their way to audiences.When a film manages to do both, it feels really meaningful.

So grateful that As I Am, directed by @pouryadow , received the Audience Award at the Boston Independent Film Festival. #iffboston2026

This festival brings together such thoughtful and engaged viewers, which makes this recognition feel especially special to us.

Congratulations to all of our collaborators, cast, crew, and everyone who has been part of this film since the beginning. ✨❤️✨ by @mona.sartoveh

Tomorrow night
I’ll be showing “HUNTER” as part of “Uprooted / Transplanted: Stories of Displacement” at Nave Gallery.

Opening reception: 6–8 PM
Somerville, MA

Come by if you’re around! by @mona.sartoveh

Twenty years ago, one of the first ways Pourya and I worked together was simple: I made photographs, and he wrote stories inspired by them. I was captivated then by the way he played with words, and I still am. I have always admired how he builds emotion through silence, and how he allows a story to unfold in its own time.

As a photographer, I have always approached each image through my own gaze—trying to create frames that hold emotion, reflect a story, and speak for
themselves. Pourya always gave me the space to bring that voice into the worlds of his films.

I never came to cinema by leaving photography behind. I came through my own language—through seeing, framing, and searching for meaning through the lens.

With “As I Am” , I had the chance to step further into that space as a co-writer, and to experience storytelling through film in a new way. That means a great deal to me, especially in a film like this—quiet, human, and free of unnecessary noise. A film that trusts silence. A film where every frame asks you to pause, breathe, and feel.

Thank you, Pourya, for your trust, and for this opportunity.

#film #storytelling #photography
#iffboston2026 @iffboston @brattletheatre by @mona.sartoveh

Thrilled to share that As I Am, directed by Pourya Dow, has been selected for the 2026 Boston Independent Film Festival, with its first regional screening in Boston.

This film has been a long and deeply personal journey, and it means a lot to see it included in a festival known for championing independent cinema and thoughtful storytelling.

📍 Brattle Theatre
40 Brattle Street Cambridge, Massachusetts
🗓 April 25, 2026
🕛 12:00 PM
Tickets: https://iffboston.org/events/asiam/

If you’re in Boston, we’d love to see you there.

@pouryadow
#iffboston2026 @iffboston @brattletheatre by @mona.sartoveh

Ty Burr : “As I Am” (April 25, 12:00 p.m., Brattle Theatre) - This one’s a find: An Iranian drama set on Boston’s South Shore, about Fariborz (David Diaan), a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War now settled into life as a Massachusetts fisherman, husband and father, and the appearance of a former platoon-mate, Amir (Shahrokh Moshkin Ghalam), carrying a secret from their past.
Written and directed by Pourya Azerbayjani Dow, a filmmaker in exile, with flashes of meta-awareness that recall the greats of the Iranian New Wave. “

#iffboston2026 by @mona.sartoveh