This work began with a glass negative I found at the flea market of Place du Jeu de Balle in Brussels. The photograph was made before the Second World War and somehow survived the century that followed before finding its way into my hands. Only two months later, during nights of bombardment in Shiraz, southern Iran, I found myself repeatedly returning to the image of an unknown woman preserved on that fragile piece of glass. The work is not a portrait of her. Nor is it an attempt to reconstruct her face, her identity, or her story. The photograph served only as a point of departure. What interested me was the possibility that the image of a stranger from another era could still provoke tenderness, curiosity, and imagination in the midst of fear and uncertainty. The resulting work bears no direct resemblance to the woman in the original negative. It emerged through a process of transformation, invention, and accumulation. In those nights, while violence shaped the horizon, I found myself drawn toward a human presence from another century. Not because I knew her. But because I didn’t. A stranger. And yet, in the heart of that dark, the ultimate companion.
