NINE x FIRE: Shahabodinn’s Ritual of Destruction, Renewal, and Photographic Transcendence

Fire has always been more than just heat and light. It is the spark of civilization, the heart of many rituals, the light that both consumes and reveals. In NINE x FIRE, released September 27, 2025, Iranian-born artist Shahabodinn transforms fire from an element into a subject, a symbol, and a method—culminating in an 18-year photographic odyssey that fuses abstraction, philosophy, and ritual.

The book, published by Art Vortex, gathers 81 color photographs across nine sections, a distillation of more than 9,000 exposures captured during an extraordinary artistic experiment. The result is both exhibition catalog and metaphysical meditation, a work that challenges the conventions of fine art photography while embracing fire as humanity’s most ancient metaphor for destruction and renewal.

The Genesis: A Condemned Building, a Living Ritual

The crucible for NINE x FIRE was not a studio or gallery, but a condemned gang headquarters in one of California’s most violent, neglected neighborhoods. In late 2015, Shahabodinn purchased the building outright, committing to live onsite during its demolition and nine-month reconstruction.

In early 2016, over 81 days, in 27 photography sessions, he immersed himself in the volatile environment of burning, collapsing, and rebuilding. More than 9,000 images were captured during this period, using only materials drawn from the building itself or brought in for reconstruction. Without artificial lighting or staging. The camera became both witness and participant in a process that blurred the line between art-making and ritual.

“The goal,” Shahabodinn reflects, “was to channel an instinctual engagement with fire—burning away to clear the path for transformation, renewal, and transcendence.”

The approach is raw, documentary in spirit, but filtered through a uniquely experimental lens. Each photograph remains uncropped, with editing limited to dust and noise reduction and minor color correction. The images shimmer with fire’s volatility: bokeh, blur, and saturated grain evoke the ephemeral flicker of flame in ways that defy traditional photographic clarity.

Fire as Subject, Fire as Symbol

Fire is one of humanity’s earliest technologies and deepest symbols. From ancient rituals in Shahabodinn’s native Iran to the eternal flames of temples and hearths across civilizations, it has stood for purification, sacrifice, destruction, and rebirth.

“Symbolically, fire embodies both destruction and renewal,” Shahabodinn notes in the introduction. “It burns away to clear the path for transformation.”

In NINE x FIRE, the element is captured not as a landscape detail or a backdrop to human presence, but as protagonist. Light and heat at the instant of consumption become metaphors for metamorphosis itself. Where most photographers seek to preserve and freeze the world, Shahabodinn chases fire’s volatility—its refusal to be fixed.

The aesthetic is a stark departure from the traditional landscape photography he studied for decades. Instead of crisp detail and monumental vistas, these images are intimate, fragmentary, and abstract. Flames are rendered as saturated planes of color, spectral blurs, sudden voids of shadow. The result is neither documentary nor purely abstract, but something in between—a photographic invocation.

The Power of Nine

If fire provided the method, the number nine provided the structure. At first unnoticed, the recurrence of nine—9,000 exposures, 81 final images, 27 sessions, nine months of reconstruction—revealed itself as the project unfolded.

In numerology, nine represents the end of a cycle and the threshold of renewal. It is the final stage before transformation, a symbolic moment of culmination. Dante divided Hell into nine circles; Pythagoras regarded nine as the number of completion before perfection; in everyday culture, “a cat has nine lives” and “cloud nine” evoke a sense of transcendence beyond ordinary existence.

Shahabodinn embraced this synchronicity, allowing nine to dictate the project’s structure and its ultimate release date: 09/27/2025, nine years after the central photographic sessions. The symbolism deepened when, just before publication, an accidental fire destroyed the building that had anchored the project. Demolished and sold for redevelopment, the site itself completed its cycle as the book prepared to enter the world.

“The next cycle begins,” Shahabodinn writes.

Technique at the Edge of Safety

Beyond its symbolic layers, NINE x FIRE is technically radical. Where most landscape photographers step back—using wide angles, long exposures, and often black-and-white exposures to impose control—Shahabodinn stepped in.

Working at dangerous proximity, at times within the flames themselves, he employed macro lenses, faster shutter speeds, and wide apertures. The shallow depth of field transforms fire into a living abstraction, each flicker reduced to fragments of color, blur, and vapor. Rather than clarity, the images embrace noise and grain, allowing the materiality of digital photography to mirror fire’s own instability.

Yet there is restraint in the method. The images remain unmanipulated, unretouched beyond basic corrections. No cropping, no composite work, no artificial light. In this way, Shahabodinn preserves a principle of photographic honesty, even as he pushes technique into unfamiliar terrain.

The result is a tension between raw documentation and painterly abstraction, between ritual event and aesthetic artifact.

From Private Practice to Public Revelation

NINE x FIRE is remarkable not only for its content, but for what it represents in Shahabodinn’s career. Born in Iran, he began experimenting with photography at the age of eight, immersing himself in darkroom practice and hand-rolling film by 14, and pursuing formal study thereafter. Yet for four decades, his practice remained private—an esoteric dialogue with photography, poetry, and music as tools of transformation.

Until now, he never intended to release his work publicly. NINE x FIRE represents a decisive break: a project whose symbolic demands compelled disclosure. “I never planned to publish,” he admits, “but the numerology and symbolism of NINE x FIRE compelled completion.”

This first public release positions Shahabodinn not only as an artist, but as a critical thinker whose work straddles art, ritual, and philosophy. His synthesis of Eastern fire symbolism, Western numerology, and contemporary abstraction resonates with traditions of both mysticism and modernism.

Destruction and Renewal in the Contemporary Moment

The resonance of NINE x FIRE extends beyond personal symbolism. In an era marked by climate crisis, social upheaval, and cultural reinvention, fire is an apt metaphor for the cycles of collapse and regeneration shaping the collective imagination.

The condemned building, a gang headquarters that he reclaimed for the project, becomes a stage for larger questions of neglect, resilience, and transformation. Its destruction—both intentional and accidental—parallels broader societal cycles: demolition as prelude to renewal.

For collectors and curators, the work offers more than aesthetic appeal. It stands as a chronicle of ritual destruction in a world that must continually confront endings in order to imagine beginnings.

The Book as Artifact

Published in hardcover by Art Vortex, NINE x FIRE runs 106 pages with 81 full-color plates. Its design mirrors its content: uncompromising, raw, and luminous. At once a catalog of images and a philosophical treatise, the book is both artwork and artifact, a testament to fire’s role as creative destroyer.

For Shahabodinn, the project is not an endpoint but a threshold. “Keeping the fire alive is a sacred task,” he writes. “NINE x FIRE is my attempt.”

Publication Details

• Title: NINE x FIRE
• Artist: Shahabodinn
• Format: Hardback, 202 pages | 81 color plates
• ISBN: 979-8-9931547-1-8
• LCCN: 2025919924
• Publisher: Art Vortex | Release date: Sept. 27, 2025

For review copies, exhibition inquiries, or interviews, contact artvortexgroup@gmail.com or call (562) 888-3006. More information can be found at www.Shahabodinn.com