A Home Made of Us
After leaving one broken home to build another in exile, this project began with self-portraits taken in moments of solitude after I left Iran. Arriving in Marseille marked a turning point: I unpacked, arranged my few belongings, and began to photograph what I had carried with me, objects that became fragile anchors to a place I never fully belonged to, yet could never return to. Suspended between two worlds, I feared remaining in this in-between space, neither rooted in France nor at home in Iran.
Slowly, I began to build a community of women who shared this sense of being unhomed, Iranian women and others from different diasporas, all trying to carve out a place in the city that received us. I eventually turned the lens outward: toward them, the moments we share, their homes, and the objects they carry.
In collaboration with the women who have become my community, I capture gestures, conversations, and the small rituals that create intimacy. Together, we are shaping an alternative version of home, made of faces, voices, and shared resilience. This work reflects on how exile reshapes attachment, and how sisterhood transforms displacement into connection, moving between lived moments and constructed images that reflects my own emotional landscape in exile.
This work was developed through the LTP photobook program at Penumbra Foundation and Magnum summer workshop with Newsha Tavakolian , and was awarded the UPP prize.
