Now... I Let Go!

I lost my father last year in Iran while I was very far away. In a way to cope with his loss, I found myself walking through cemeteries close to my home in Utah (USA) to reflect. One day, I saw a person who came to visit the grave of a loved one, sat there and smoked a cigarette. Before he leaves, he took another cigarette and left it at the grave. After the passing of my father, I caught myself in the act of drifting away in memory. As a child, I used to love drinking afternoon tea with my father; that was our thing. Nowadays, I started drinking afternoon tea again. Something as trivial and routine as this, became such a cherished thing to me because the act itself is engulfed in memories of precious moments of the past. We cannot have our loved ones around us indefinitely. We seem to then start the process of preserving things that were worn by them, favored or just touched by them. We look for things that made them laugh, things that bound them to us. These are often everyday, unvaluable objects that were worn out throughout the years. I became intrigued by this phenomenon and started visiting cemeteries. I would look for objects that were left behind on the graves by friends and family. This photography project is inspired by the objects that I witnessed on the graves in cemeteries, and the objects that were once my father’s everyday items that I now keep so close to my heart. Each photograph celebrates an object, a memory, and a relationship, all unmistakingly entangled.