The Art of Being Seen

Image

Imagine choosing to put the details of your life online for the world to see. How would you feel knowing that anyone, anywhere, could watch you whenever they wanted?

In 2002, as he made his way home from his exhibition in Dakar, Senegal, Hasan Elahi was detained by the FBI at the Detroit airport.

“Shortly after Sept. 11, I was erroneously reported as a terrorist,” Elahi says, settling deeper into a leather couch in the Arizona Arts office. He’s dressed in a striking dark-colored suit, recounting a story he has told many times. “I went through six months of investigations by the FBI. In the end, I was cleared. But you’re never really cleared.”

As a working artist, Elahi traveled often. International flights, shifting schedules and unpredictable circumstances were routine. So, he continued sending his FBI agent photographs of his most mundane moments: eating, cleaning, walking, paying bills, even snapshots of every toilet he’s ever used.

His collection of intimate photographs became “Tracking Transience,” a public website documenting his daily life with timestamps and a map showing his location. The project opened conversations around identity, mass surveillance and a digital era that was beginning to form, years before Instagram and the self-documentation it has normalized.

Image

Today, Elahi’s work appears in major exhibitions around the world, mostly through large-scale photographs. Among an extensive list of accolades and exhibition venues, he has received a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography, earned the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award and presented his work at the Sundance Film Festival. This year, his work will appear at major art center Espacio Fundación Telefónica in Madrid, featuring a piece spanning 40 by 10 feet.

“I’m really a big believer in art that barely passes for art,” he says. “All art was contemporary art at one time. Artists have this amazing skill to hold a mirror to society and inspire folks in a way that many other disciplines can’t.”

Image

In July 2025, Elahi was appointed dean of Arizona Arts, the university’s integrated division that unites the College of Fine Arts with public-facing arts institutions like Arizona Arts Live, the Center for Creative Photography and the University of Arizona Museum of Art. To say he is excited would be an understatement.

“This was a place that was always on my radar,” says Elahi, who had previously guest lectured at both the School of Art and the CCP. “When the opportunity for the position came up, I jumped on it right away.” Elahi notes with enthusiasm the multiple arts programs with Top 10 rankings.

Most recently, The Wrap ranked the School of Theatre, Film & Television No. 4 among public film schools in the United States. It’s one of the few top-tier programs outside Los Angeles and New York.

“We are a shining example of some exceptional work that’s being done in the field,” he says. “The opportunity to lead is unbelievable.”

Like his art, Elahi’s path to higher education was anything but conventional.

“I dropped out of high school,” he says. “Kind of ironic considering, you know, I’m actually running a college now.”

Without a high school diploma, he enrolled in college to study architecture, then “failed gloriously,” as he puts it. He transferred to pursue an associate’s degree and was academically dismissed.

A relative urged Elahi to finish school. When he looked at his credits, he realized he was closest to a degree in art, a discipline that coincidentally gave him the freedom to explore ideas across multiple academic disciplines that truly interested him.

Image

Before coming to the U of A, Elahi served as the dean of the College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts at Wayne State University in Detroit. He says he sees parallels between Detroit and Tucson, both in size and in their unique creative identities.

Tucson, he says, has a cultural infrastructure that is expanding and has the capacity to support working artists. His vision is to help guide that growth responsibly, in collaboration with the community. That includes strengthening relationships with local high schools and Pima Community College, a major pipeline to the College of Fine Arts.

“You go to different parts of the country and ask, ‘What do you know about Tucson?’ People will tell you it’s a quirky, artistic city,” he says. “Arizona Arts has a significant part in the creative culture and the brand of Tucson as an arts and culture city.”

The world, he believes, will always need creative storytellers.

“I come from a fundamental belief that anything in the near future that can be automated will be automated. So, therefore, what are the things that truly make us human?” Elahi says. “The arts is one of those.”

Which raises the inevitable question: Is artificial intelligence a threat?

“If you look at the logic of progression of automation and AI, recorded music should have wiped out concerts a long time ago. Film should have wiped out theater,” Elahi says. “Humans have a real, strong need to tell a story and listen to a story.”

For all his big-picture plans, Elahi is equally enthusiastic about the everyday joys of his new home in Tucson.

“I like food,” he says with a grin. “My goal is to eat at every taco place in Tucson. I’m failing miserably. There’s so many of them. But I’m trying.” For now, that seems like the perfect place to begin: getting to know Tucson in the most Tucson way possible.