In their own dark way, visions of dystopian futures can be as compelling as their utopian opposites.

"I wanted to make a post-apocalyptic near-future story of failed Utopic landscapes," says artist Pouria Khojastehpay. And at this point, he's succeeded.

His most recent image series fuses the artist's love of dystopic science fiction (he cut his teeth on Akira and Philip K. Dick) with a lifelong interest in architecture. Titled Kadingirra after the Sumerian name for Babylon, it depicts imposing Brutalist structures and bombed-out tower blocks emerging from the sand like concrete space stations, while smoke clouds fill the sky. Cloaked figures slouch -- flee? -- through a barren desert.

"The robed men were a common thing in southern Iran, where my father grew up," says Khojastehpay, who was raised in the Netherlands. "The bleak, gray atmosphere is what I feel Iran went through during and after the Islamic Revolution."

But that's as much as he'll give away when it comes to what it all means.

"When you read books, you transform the lyrical into visual in your mind," he says. "What I wanted to archive is to let you read the visuals and have your own interpretation of what happened or is happening."