No Soldier Has Returned From War

I remember a misty image from my childhood, so distant I cannot tell whether it is fantasy or reality. I was walking with my uncle through our neighbourhood. He later went missing in the war, and eleven years passed before his body was returned to us, designated a ‘Martyr’.

Now I see soldiers everywhere, in the streets and on forgotten posters. I cannot shake the thought that if war comes, they will become a memory, and I keep telling myself that no soldier has returned from war.

I photographed this series with an Agfa Isolette, the ‘Soldiers’ Camera’, on expired black-and-white film. The degraded negatives hide the soldiers’ identities: in their uniforms, they all look alike.

The portraits combine archival images of the Iran–Iraq war with photographs of the Martyrs’ Cemetery, printed on glass using the wet collodion process. The video recounts life during the war. Together they commemorate lives cut short, balanced between remembering and letting go.