The Sea Inside

The Sea Inside
The sea refreshes our imagination because it does not make us think of human life; yet it rejoices the soul, because, like the soul, it is an infinite and impotent striving, a strength that is ceaselessly broken by falls, an eternal and exquisite lament. The sea thus enchants us like music, which, unlike language, never bears the traces of things, never tells us anything about human beings, but imitates the stirrings of the soul. Sweeping up with the waves of those movements, plunging back with them, the heart thus forgets its own failures and finds solace in an intimate harmony between its own sadness and the sea’s sadness, which merges the sea’s destiny with the destinies of all things.
Marcel Proust, “Pleasures and Days”


Enduring hot weather and standing by the sea, looking at it as a fisherman looks, walking on the hot sands with camera and feeling the burn of one’s foot sole, waiting hours and hours to face a calm and a gentle sea, practicing patience, suffering from sunburn as seamen do, also experiencing the tender evening breeze of the sea which touches the skin, feeling stroke of the waves to the feet; all has happened and experienced during photography sessions. In other word, the act of photography ended up in a series of photographs which provide an epistemology of the sea through pictures not only for the photographer but also for the viewer. This makes it apart from other experiences such as tourist-like vision.
Collaboration with Ghaffar Shokooh