Past Continuous

I spent my childhood in a century-old house. Its high ceilings and delicate bas-reliefs carried the grace of an older architecture, and they were a source of comfort to me.

Over the years, I watched such houses being demolished one after another, replaced by anonymous apartment blocks. Yet among the broken bricks and half-standing walls, something of those who once lived there remained, and with it my own childhood memories. Ruins hold a strange presence: places once full of life seem to have travelled through time to tell us the stories of their former inhabitants.

In this series, I place people within these abandoned spaces. Their presence transforms the ruins, giving them a contemporary resonance and raising questions about their place in society today. The figures belong to the same country as the ruins they inhabit. Some locations are in Afghanistan, which for me has long been associated with destruction after decades of war; the others are scattered across Iran. Between the silent weight of the ruins and the almost ghostly presence of the figures, the photographs move between past and present, memory and loss.