Traces of a Bond began after the death of a close friend whose grave I could not visit because of distance. In the years that followed, I found myself repeatedly drawn to cemeteries, observing how people continued to relate to those who were no longer physically present. Only later did I understand that these visits may also have been a way of approaching a loss whose physical site remained inaccessible to me.
The photographs were made in September 2016 in cemeteries in Sanandaj and Semnan, Iran. Rather than documenting mourning itself, I became interested in the small acts through which a relationship persists: returning to a grave, praying, gathering, touching or kissing a gravestone, keeping an image close, and leaving objects behind.
My approach was observational and unstaged. I did not direct the people I photographed. I introduced myself afterwards and asked permission to retain and use the images, while keeping my distance whenever privacy was needed.
As this version of the sequence progresses, people gradually disappear from the frame. A pomegranate and dried flowers remain on a grave; finally, the cemetery itself is left without a visible human presence. These final images shift attention from the body to what it leaves behind — objects, remembered gestures and spaces repeatedly returned to.
The project asks how physical absence can coexist with an enduring relational presence. Here, absence is not an empty space or a definitive ending, but something continually negotiated through memory, ritual, image, touch and return. What remains is not the person themselves, but the traces of a bond that continues to take form in the lives of those who remain.
