“You Can’t Go Home Again” is a journey of tenuous reconciliation. My relationship with Iran has long been shaped by desire mixed with shame. This project is my effort to understand what it means to be Iranian in a time of intense anti-Muslim and anti-Iranian sentiment. I reflect on the consequences of our violent history and connect the threads between past and present. Most importantly, and perhaps impossibly, I want to be Iranian again. I want to shed my shame.
The 1979 Islamic revolution—a violent reaction to years of foreign influence and resource extraction—was supposed to bring independence and equality to ordinary Iranians. Crippling sanctions against Iran in the aftermath of the U.S. embassy hostage crisis in Tehran produced a weakened economy and a fragile population. The subsequent Iran-Iraq war further devastated Iranian political and cultural terrain.
I was born in the midst of this chaos. Facing a failing economy and growing religious conservatism, my parents moved us across the world. In some ways, it was like we never left: the U.S. embassy hostage crisis and anti-Muslim xenophobia dominated the headlines. We were labeled inherently violent, perpetually oppressed. Traumatic events in my former home and racist stereotypes in my current one made me ashamed of my Iranian identity. I returned to Iran in 2017 to piece together fragments of my past and present self.
My photographs show people who envisioned better futures for themselves, but saw their dreams fade with time. The images depict simmering tension in the background, acknowledging that peaceful moments are always and already precarious. But I also want my pictures to witness adaptability and resilience, to show the ways that ordinary Iranians embody humor and humanity despite so many societal constraints.