Mission
• Creates author driven documentary films with cinematic storytelling and cross cultural insight.
• Collaborates with media organisations and cultural institutions across film, photography, and visual storytelling.
• Open to commissions, partnerships, and teaching across institutional and independent contexts.
Gaylan Nazhad
BA-Drama
MA-Documentary by Practice
PhD-Art and Media
Gaylan Nazhad is a British artist working across photography and documentary film. His practice explores identity, displacement, and the subtle dynamics of urban interaction, examining the emotional and psychological spaces that emerge between people, place, and memory.
His work has been presented at cultural and academic institutions including the National Portrait Gallery, London, Watermans Arts Centre, FACT Liverpool, Broadway Cinema Nottingham, Sheffield DocFest, New Art Exchange Nottingham, the University of Nottingham, and the Library of Birmingham, alongside exhibitions and screenings throughout the United Kingdom, the Middle East, and China.
His practice has also been featured by BBC Radio, BBC East Midlands, Notts TV, Kurdsat TV, and LeftLion Magazine, extending his work beyond galleries and cinemas into wider public and cultural conversations.
Nazhad is the author of more than a dozen publications. His most recent monograph, Silk and Dust, continues his long term engagement with contemporary social experience through a quiet, observational approach.
He began his career in 1992 as a television presenter in South Kurdistan before moving into theatre directing. His practice gradually shifted toward documentary filmmaking and photography, where he developed a sustained interest in lived experience and the complexities of everyday life.
Following his graduation from Royal Holloway, University of London, in 2009, he began teaching internationally, lecturing in photography and documentary practice at universities across the Middle East and China, alongside his ongoing artistic work.