Russia, on the banks of the Volga : family of fishermen. 1997
I was working on a feature on the Caspian Sea for National Geographic Magazine. I had been touring in four of the five neighbouring countries for six months. I discovered the sea at the age of 7, on the southern banks of the Caspian, actually, on the Iranian side. My dream was to one day travel around it. I didn’t know that the day of this trip, some 40 years later I wouldn’t be able to go on the side of my country of origin, Iran. This particular day, I was on the bank of the Volga, the mythical river that crosses all Russia to come lying on the Caspian. I had the authorization to visit a kolkhoz, a sort of soviet community farm that are still active, with more or less efficacy, many years after the fall of the Soviet Union. The big activity of Kolkhoz was fishing. On the very early morning, men would go on the sea, on small boats. Their catches were supposed to be brought back to the farm and put on the floor. There, these two girls had to take them and clean them. Then the split between the entire community, taken by others. Of course, the news of the arrival of a photographer from Paris had gone around the village. Many dream about Paris. They had put on their most beautiful clothes. But how to make this work hard and dirty? They were waiting from me to take only portraits of the people in the village. But what interested me was the reality of their daily life. Not happy to be presented with their fish, one turned her back to me and the other turned her look from me. In the evening around the big family table of the farm eating the catch of the day, all these stories were told to me.