When Hannaneh Heydari started using Tehran’s metro system, she was captivated by the “pile of stories and emotions” she observed in the passengers around her.

The 19-year-old graphic arts student said she saw the metro as a “mirror of the Tehran metropolis”, with the challenges facing the city and the range of emotions felt by its inhabitants all on display inside a single carriage.

Hannaneh Heydari is a graphic artist and photographer.

“I became enthusiastic about this space as if it were a city. So I began to record what I saw,” she told Euronews.

Heidari uses her smartphone to capture photos inside the metro, with her powerful images — usually shot in black-and-white — seeking to capture the raw, and often conflicting, emotions of her fellow passengers.

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She posts the photos, taken in the metro’s women’s carriages and mixed carriages, to her Instagram account Metrodemy — a combination of the words metro and epidemy.

Her distinct images have already earned her more than 5,000 followers.

However, the project is not without challenges.

Heydari recalled incidents where passengers have taken her phone or brought her to metro security, and said she has a policy to “never hang on to photos” in case they are erased.

Keen not to be limited to her metro photography, Heydari said she will continue exploring other forms of graphic art and design.