Women

States of Presence

Ongoing Photographic Project

Women: States of Presence is an ongoing photographic project shaped by my encounters with Iranian women over years of work and personal journeys. The images on this page are only a small part of a larger archive: an archive of layered presences, appearing across different conditions of life. This series does not attempt to create a single image of “the Iranian woman.” Any image that becomes too fixed inevitably leaves part of reality outside the frame. What matters to me is approaching situations in which women’s presence appears with its complexity: awareness, silence, beauty, fatigue, strength, and the possibility of change. The place of women in Iran has long been shaped by tensions between history, tradition, law, family, religion, and the desire for freedom. Yet these photographs do not try to explain that history. They pause before moments in which life reveals itself before becoming analysis or slogan. For me, this series is not about looking at women from the outside. It is an attempt to come close without possessing; to see without reducing. The women in these images are not simply subjects of the photograph; they carry time, memory, relation, and the future. This project comes from a quiet hope: the belief in a presence that, even in silence, asks the world to look again.