Shahablou was raised in Tehran, and obtained a bachelor's and master's degree in photography from the University of Tehran. For the last two years of his undergraduate course he worked for the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organisation,[1] photographing heritage sites while managing the organisation's darkroom. He taught photography, and his work was displayed in solo exhibitions in Iran and India. He became a photojournalist at the new Azad newspaper, a pro-reformist publication established during Mohammad Khatami's presidency, and became a photojournalist and a board member of the Iranian Photojournalists Association.
When Azad was shut down in 2001 after publishing a caricature of an ayatollah, Shahablou travelled to India and Afghanistan looking for documentary subject matter, resulting in well-received solo exhibitions in Delhi and Tehran. He continued teaching, and returned to Tehran University of Art to complete an MA in photography in 2006.
Shahablou was a gay man and a gay rights activist.[2] Amid growing social repression after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took power in 2005, he was imprisoned as a political prisoner for membership of a dissident group.[3]
In 2011 he fled Iran for the United Kingdom, where he was given refugee status. His work was known for capturing LGBT subjects, and he also worked as a photographer for Amnesty International,[4] and for events for Cooltan Arts,[5] alongside working in a supermarket.
Shahablou died of COVID-19 on 15 April 2020, aged 56, from COVID-19 during the COVID-19 pandemic in England.[6]