2016 · Iran · Ongoing

Tears of motherland

35 photographs

Everything began in my childhood, when my uncle, a hunter, gave us a taxidermied flamingo as a gift. Its frozen gaze terrified me. Every morning when I woke up, I wished that maybe she had flown out of the window. I grew up in one of the most important parts of the Caspian Sea in Iran, the Miankaleh ecosystem, one of the richest wildlife ecosystems in the world. As I grew older, I witnessed the rapid destruction of this environment. The land was drying, wildlife was disappearing, and the lives of the people who called it home were changing. One day, I found the beautiful body of a dead flamingo floating in the water. In that moment, I felt my childhood fear turn into a deep wound. For the past eight years, I have been working on this project, trying to transform that fear into action, a way to confront a wound that still echoes within me and throughout my environment. The word flamingo originally means “flamed” or “burning.” Perhaps we are the flamingo. Perhaps our destiny is the same, shaped by the same geography.