This photograph is from a larger body of work titled Folding Patterns.

They trace fragments of my childhood as a refugee in Athens, Greece during the Iran–Iraq War

of the 1980s.

My family fled Tehran when I was a child, and for a time, we lived in a crowded hotel before

moving to basement apartments in Voula, then a quiet town on the outskirts of Athens. While my

father worked, my mother and I collected cardboard from the streets to sell. Occasionally we

found sewing patterns that my mother would use to make shirts for my father to wear to work.

The paper patterns were always spread across the table—folded, unfolded, and reused, like a

quiet ritual - never rushed, always present.

The large format photographs in this collection are details of those patterns, and, the layers

between cardboard boxes-the lines and creases between cardboard and paper patterns, folded

and time-worn. There's something about the texture of these things-patterns for blue-collar

shirts, the kind that come from brands like McCalls or Simplicity-that feels like a quiet record of

movement, of settlement, of the body carrying a memory.

These hand toned silver gelatin prints are not just photographs. They are a reflection of how we

hold onto things, worn by time and handling. They carry traces of movement, labor, and

adaptation.

The hand toned silver gelatin prints reflect how ordinary materials can hold memory —small

records of migration, resilience, and the quiet act of beginning again.