My childhood home was in Iran, on the banks of a river. It faced another house on the opposite bank, connected by a wooden bridge. One day, a flood swept through our neighborhood, destroying both the bridge and the house on the other bank. The ruins of the destroyed house remained untouched for years, haunting the surrounding nature.
Thirty years later, I left Iran and began working on alternative photographic processes from the early days of photography. My studio, located in an old factory, overlooks an abandoned building. On the window of my studio, this building superimposes with the ruins of my childhood. It also echoes the first ever fixed (permanent) photograph by Niepce (1765-1833), "View from the Window at Le Gras" (1827), taken from his studio, which shows a blurry architecture. Impressions, techniques, and epochs merge and respond to each other.
This photo-object, once unfolded, reveals a series of views taken from my studio. The photographs, seemingly overexposed, actually result from underexposure during enlargement, tracing the disappearance of the mental image over time.
This series is a tribute to Niepce that, at the same time, serves as a repository of mental images, an attempt to trace the past in an improbable place, to enclose it in a moving box, and take it with me, as there is no possible return, neither to the past nor to my country of origin (nor to my childhood home).