In Mehrdad Mosaferi’s photos, people are often waiting. They look across the sea, disappear into the mist. There is always a sense that something has happened (or is about to happen) just outside the frame.

Born in Bandar Abbas in southern Iran, Mehrdad grew up in a working-class neighbourhood where much of his childhood unfolded outdoors: in the streets, parks and, most importantly, by the Persian Gulf. He came to photography in 2017, eventually developing a practice that moves between documentary and staged imagery and draws heavily on personal memory, social structures and the unease of the world around him.

For Mehrdad, a photo is a kind of document — not just proof of what happened in front of the camera, but of what happened inside him. Loss, depression, childhood friendships, the feeling of not quite belonging, and a deep attachment to the Gulf all find their way into his images. Water becomes uncertainty; a dog can stand for loyalty; a figure looking towards the horizon may be searching for a person, a hope, or a part of themselves that has disappeared.

I spoke with Mehrdad about growing up in Bandar Abbas, turning depression into the art project, and why, no matter how far his work takes him, he keeps returning to the sea.

— Mehrdad, your inspiration comes from childhood memories of growing up in a working-class family, everyday life across different social strata, and the uneasy feelings brought on by the sociopolitical events happening around you. Let’s start from the very beginning. Can you take me back to your childhood and tell me a little about growing up in a working-class family?

— Sire! I grew up in Bandar Abbas, in a working-class family and a working-class neighbourhood. At the time, I didn’t think there was anything unusual about it. It was simply my life. But later I realised that growing up in that environment gave me experiences that were very different from those of people from other social backgrounds.

As a child, life happened mostly outside. We would spend our time in the streets, in parks, by the sea, always together with friends. In the summer, for example, we would sometimes build a bicycle ourselves from second-hand parts. We would find the wheels in one place, a tube somewhere else, put everything together, and then ride to the beach, swim, and sing together. We would also go out into nature and collect wild honey from trees. These were ordinary things for us, so I assumed that everyone had similar childhood experiences.

It was only when I became a teenager and started meeting people from different social backgrounds that I realised how different our lives had been. The way they spoke, their culture, even their dreams sometimes felt different from mine. At the same time, my own stories sounded unusual to them. That surprised me, because until then I had never really thought about class or the fact that people could grow up in completely different worlds.

I grew up with many brothers and sisters, and because we were a large family, we didn’t have many material things. Everything had to be shared, and resources had to be divided between all of us. At the time, I probably didn’t think much about it, but now I see how those limitations — along with the memories I have with my siblings — shaped the way I see people, relationships, and everyday life.

— And when did you first feel like you wanted to tell stories through photography?

— My interest in storytelling actually started before photography. When I was five or six years old, I remember watching films with my family and being amazed by the idea that you could sit in front of a screen for one or two hours and be completely absorbed in somebody else’s story. A film could make you feel something very deeply. I didn’t know what kind of story I wanted to tell myself, but I already knew that I wanted to tell stories.

As a teenager, I became very interested in cinema. But living in Bandar Abbas, far from Tehran and from the centre of the film industry, made that path feel difficult and distant. Access was much more limited then than it is today. Eventually, I became frustrated with cinema because I felt that I couldn’t really reach it. In a way, I said goodbye to cinema and started looking for another way to express myself.

That was when I found photography.

When I started taking photos, I was still driven by the same desire: I wanted to tell my own story and the stories of the people around me. In particular, I felt that there was something in my family’s story that I wanted to preserve and eventually share with others.

— And how would you describe your approach to photography? How do you try to tell your story and the stories of others?

— I think one of the key ideas in my photography is that a photo is a kind of document for me. It is a way of proving that something happened inside me — a feeling, an experience, something I lived through.

Whether I am working in a documentary way or creating staged images, I try to turn those experiences into something artistic. Once they become visible, they can also be shared. Someone might have gone through something similar, or their experience may be completely different, but they can still connect with the feeling behind the image. I think that is one of the universal qualities of art.

There is always something personal in my photos. They are not particularly happy, because that is not really how I see the world. Of course, I have happy moments and enjoy my life, but when I look more deeply at my own experiences and at what is happening around me, other emotions tend to come to the surface.

You can see that throughout my work — in Invasion, which came out of the depression I went through in 2022, in We Won’t Make It to the Celebration, and in the project I am working on now. They are different bodies of work, but emotionally they are connected. Each of them contains something of me.

I don’t want to make work that pretends I am someone I am not. I want my photographs to stay truthful to what I feel and what I have experienced.

— I saw the photo of two dogs and a man looking into the distance. What is the idea behind this image? What were you trying to express with it?

— I staged this photograph in the mountains of northern Iran, where everything was covered in mist. At the time, I felt I had lost something forever, but I still couldn’t move on. I was caught in this prolonged state of saying goodbye, unable to fully close the door and step into the next chapter of my life.

I am a very emotional person, and I often return to the past — to memories and to people who have shaped me. That is where the title Long Goodbye comes from. To me, a long goodbye exists somewhere between an ending and the hope that it might not really be over. You know you should let go, but you still leave the door slightly open, thinking that perhaps the person will come back or something will change.

The person in the image is smoking and looking into the distance, almost as if he is waiting for something to return. There is also a dog, which in my visual language represents loyalty — to the past, to what we once had, and perhaps to something that no longer exists in the same way.

Even when everything else feels uncertain, that loyalty remains. There is sadness in it, but also a little hope. That is the feeling I wanted to capture in Long Goodbye: knowing that something may be over, while still not being completely ready to let it go.

— I am sorry if this is a sensitive question, but maybe you could share a little about the person you once dedicate a post to. You shared a lot of memories about him there. Who was he to you, and what happened?

— He was my best friend from childhood. We grew up together; we were very close.

I lost him in 2021, during a police chase in Bandar Abbas. By then, photography had taken my life in a different direction, and we hadn’t seen each other for some time. But I always thought we would reconnect one day, once I had become more established as a photographer. I never got that chance.

Around the same time, I lost several other friends too. Experiencing so much loss in such a short period pushed me into a very deep depression. The photo of my childhood friend became a kind of memorial — a way to preserve the fact that he had existed and had shaped part of who I am.

— Would you say that Invasion came out of that period in your life? You mentioned that it grew out of a time of deep depression and hopelessness.

— Yes, exactly.

Back then, I felt almost like one of the baby turtles that hatch and have to make their way to the sea. Not all of them survive that journey, and that was how I saw my own life: many of us had started in the same place, but somehow I had to keep going.

I kept reminding myself that I still had dreams — to become a photographer, find my own voice, travel outside Iran, see exhibitions and festivals, and discover the wider world. Those ambitions gave me a reason to keep going through an incredibly dark period.

Then my romantic relationship also ended. At some point, I looked at myself and realised how completely broken I felt.

Around that time, I had a terrible nightmare. It stayed with me, but whenever I tried to describe it — or more importantly, to explain the emotions behind it — I felt that people didn’t really understand what I was trying to say. Words weren’t enough. So I decided to create a project that could recreate that atmosphere and communicate those feelings visually. That became Invasion.

The project was about many things I was struggling with at the time: limitations, desires I couldn’t fulfil, questions about my identity, and the feeling that other people or institutions were constantly trying to tell me who I was supposed to be. I felt that there were labels being placed on me that didn’t correspond to who I actually was. I wanted to understand who I was without those labels — what I wanted, what I was afraid of, and where my depression was coming from.

So Invasion became a journey inward, evidence that this period had really happened inside me — that these emotions, this exhaustion, this confusion and pain were real.

Working on the project also helped me process what I was going through. After I finished it, I started to feel better. In some way, making the work helped me move out of that depression.

— Thank you for sharing that, Mehrdad. Something else I noticed in your work is how often the sea appears (actually the water in general — the sea, lakes, rain, even just a sense of humidity in the air). Why is it so important for you?

— The sea is very personal to me. I always return to it throughout the year, especially in autumn and winter, when the weather is softer, the sunsets turn pink, the clouds are beautiful, and migratory birds arrive after their long journeys. I feel deeply connected to that landscape, which is why the sea appears so often in my photos.

In my work, water and waves often represent uncertainty. You can never fully predict the sea’s next movement. In the same way, many of the people in my photographs seem to be waiting — looking across the water as if they are hoping for something, searching for something they have lost, or waiting for a wish to come true.

For me, the Persian Gulf is also a place of connection. People on different sides of the Gulf may live in different countries, but they share many cultural ties. The water links them. Birds cross it without paying attention to borders, and for centuries the sea has carried people, goods, and influences from Africa, India, and elsewhere. So for me, water is not only a landscape — it is also a bridge between places, cultures, and memories.

Children appear often in my photos too, especially by the sea, because they bring me back to my own childhood. When I see children on the beach, I remember swimming with my friends and growing up beside the Gulf. Through these images, I try to capture that shared experience — what it means to be born by the sea, to grow up with it, and then, later, to miss it once childhood is gone.

In a way, I still see myself as that child: someone who wants to discover, explore, and keep searching. That is also connected to the sense of loss in my work. I had a childhood friend who moved to the other side of the Gulf, to the UAE, and I never saw him again. Sometimes I still think about him and wonder where he is now.

I think that is also why my characters so often look toward the horizon. They are not only looking at the sea — they are looking for something they have lost: a person, a hope, a wish, or a part of themselves. That feeling of waiting, uncertainty, and longing is something I try to place in many of my photographs.

— You mentioned that you were working on several projects right now. Could you tell me more about them?

— Right now, I am finishing an experimental project, Open Wound. I call it experimental because I am trying to speak about something that has affected me very directly, but without showing it in a direct way. I am currently at the colour-grading stage, and I hope to finish and publish it within the next couple of months.

I am also developing another project focused much more deeply on the Persian Gulf. I am interested in the people who live on both sides of it and in the relationships that have existed between these communities for generations. For me, the Persian Gulf belongs to the people who live around it. I want to look beyond political borders and focus instead on the culture and the connections between people.

— The first project you mentioned, Open Wound, comes from personal trauma. Is it in some way a continuation of Invasion?

— Yes, there is a connection. Open Wound comes from experiences and social structures that have affected me since 2022 and continue to affect me today. Sometimes things happen so quickly that you don’t even have time to grieve or fully process one experience before something else happens.

The project is about wounds that I haven’t necessarily been able to heal, but that I want to acknowledge and document. I use photographs of myself and combine them with other kinds of images. In that sense, it continues something I explored in Invasion, but from a different perspective.

— And with the Persian Gulf project, what exactly are you looking for? How do you want to approach it?

— I see what I am doing now as the first chapter of a long-term project. I have to work on it slowly because of financial limitations, but I don’t want to give up on it because it means a lot to me.

At its core, I am trying to understand who I am and where I come from. I am interested in very simple questions: Why does this place have this name? Where did a particular tradition come from? What stories are hidden here? You can’t necessarily find the real answers on Google or ChatGPT. I think many of them live in the memories of the people who have spent their entire lives here.

That is why I am particularly interested in speaking with older people. Sometimes they may not even realise how much knowledge they carry because, for them, it is simply everyday life. But there are songs, stories, traditions and memories that have been passed down orally for generations. Some people can sing a song perfectly but could never write it down. That knowledge lives in the person.

I also have the advantage of approaching these communities not as an outsider but as someone who comes from here. I share many of these experiences myself, while at the same time every person and every place has something very specific and unique.

I think I could spend the rest of my life working on the Persian Gulf. There is so much here for me to discover as an artist.