Lush exhibition

When little-known, Iranian-born 27-year-old Shirana Shahbazi beat the likes of internationally acclaimed photographers Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Thomas Ruff to the prestigious Citibank Photography Prize in 2002, there were dark mutterings of political correctness. After all, her pictures of life in Tehran - a mother bending down to tie her son's shoelaces, a couple sitting in front of the TV -were hardly arresting images.

And while the judges praised her for introducing Westerners to images of Iran very different to the newsreel images to which we had become accustomed, it was easy to accuse her of veering to the other extreme: banality.

Although Shahbazi's subject matter remains the stuff of everyday life, there is a new lushness to her exhibition at the Barbican's Curve gallery. There has always been vivid colour in Shahbazi's work, introducing elements of kitsch with her photographs of specially commissioned billboard paintings, but here she's been allowed to play with scale. There's a huge painted and then photographed still life of tumbling fruit, and two large-scale photographs of a crudely painted woman's face.

Then there are the dead butterflies and the wallpaper of repeated images of flowers. All these together have the cumulative effect of a slow seduction.

Until Jan 20, Barbican, Silk Street EC2, daily 11am to 8pm, free. Tel: 0845 120 7550. www.barbican.org.uk Tube: Barbican/Moorgate

Shirana Shahbazi
Curve Gallery, Barbican Centre
Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS