Resonating Silences is an independent series about women who are custodians of oral tradition: female bards, folk singers, lullaby singers, players of folkloric instruments, naqqals, bakhshis, and ashiqs. They are not only performers; they carry voices, stories, melodies, and forms of memory passed from generation to generation, from body to body, from voice to voice. For this project, the women appearing in the photographs were invited, if they wished, to perform in places where women’s singing and instrumental performance had long been surrounded by taboo, restriction, or erasure. In Iran, women’s voices and public presence have been shaped by historical, social, ideological, and systemic limitations, from restrictions on singing and playing music to the gradual disappearance of women who have carried part of the country’s musical and narrative memory.

Yet this series does not define these women only through prohibition or absence. These photographs pause before a presence that continues despite restriction: a hand holding an instrument, a body remembering rhythm, a face remaining silent before song, and a public space that often passes by this presence with quiet indifference. Here, the image is not an explanation; it is a field of encounter. Resonating Silences is an attempt to see voices that have not been silenced, but continue through memory, body, and the presence of women.