A Travelogue to the Iranian Plateau

A Travelogue to the Iranian Plateau (2019–2020) is a series of digital photographs converted into negatives and printed by hand using the historical salt-printing process.

The series reflects on water and its growing scarcity on the Iranian Plateau. Like many regions of the world, Iran is facing prolonged drought, and lakes and rivers such as Lake Urmia, Hamoun Lake, the Zayandeh Rud and the Karun have become increasingly fragile. The photographs focus on the large water-storage tanks now familiar across the country, quiet signs of how people adapt as water becomes ever more precious.

For the prints, I gathered salt from Maharloo Lake, near Shiraz, where I was born. Once a beloved place for family picnics, the lake holds many of my childhood memories, and it too has been drying. Bringing its salt into the prints was a way to bind the images to this landscape and to my own memory. The work reflects on water and on the places that shape our personal and collective memory.

The images shown here are reproductions of the original hand-made prints, which could not be scanned at the time.