Hanging on the western and southern walls of Zeitgeist Café off Jackson Street are 11 black and white framed photographs by Seattle artist Colette-Yasi Naraghi. I ventured in to see the work, accompanied by my lovely mother (visiting from the Boston-area), on a sunny Monday morning after a biscuit breakfast. 

Yasi, as I know her, has published work in The Monarch before, from photo spreads to her feature with movie director Lynn Shelton. She is no stranger to The Monarch world, and yet, I always find myself surprised by the talent displayed in her spare photography.

I feel a hushed sense of curiosity when I see her shots. I am pulled in by the gravity of each piece and quieted by her detailed eye. Her work at Zeitgfeist, a series of black and white archival fiber prints titled “Iran in Photography”, is no different. “I left my native Iran as a child,” reads Yasi’s bio hanging on the western brick wall of the café. “I became interested in photography, specifically travel photography, very early on and had a constant companion in my camera.”

Iran, Yasi explains, had been absent from her work until this collection. So, two years ago she traveled to her country of origin and, guided by her grandparents, she went to places which “should have been familiar” but that she had not seen before.

The prints, each for sale framed for $200, are beautiful: one has light shining through small crosses in what might be a mosque. Another offers bark, or some other brittle material, in a sack amongst bags of garlic. Another shows a woman all in black, standing, praying, alone. Yet another offers candles melting, a dying vigil along a city street.

“There are lots of patterns in the photos,” my mother, who holds a PhD from Princeton, says. “The patterns bring you to light. The doorway brings you to light. That one there has lit candles. There’s sources of light in a lot of them. They also have structure – I like structure.” She adds, sipping her fizzy water, “They are all framed progressions.”

To me, there is always something gone in Yasi’s work – but it’s not due to a lack of skill. Rather, it’s a sense of loneliness behind the lens. It’s as if I can feel her wanting as she is taking each picture, using her camera as “companion” to help her through not having. It’s as if she’s trying to pull something from the shot that will make her vision complete or whole, but knowing at the same time that’s not possible. It’s a moving dichotomy. It’s why I seek out her work, why I want to experience it: to investigate this artistic and solemn sense of without.

In a world that offers so much – a ceaseless barrage of things to fix you, complete you, enhance you – Yasi’s work offers a more simple, truer art: a recognition that we don’t have it, that we aren’t complete; yet, there is always reason to keep exploring.

My mother and I left the café, headed out for a walk in Magnolia’s Discovery Park, and though I was leaving Yasi’s work behind now for the other patrons of Zeitgeist, I was sure it would stay with me for sometime.