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On Iran’s islands, an intriguing portrait carries new meaning
The image from Speak the Wind now echoes a war that has brought military pressure and a damaged desalination plant to the islands.
- Photographer Hoda Afshar's portraits of Hormuz and Qeshm gain urgency amid the war involving Iran, as warships and an ongoing US-Israeli blockade threaten communities she has documented since 2015.
- For centuries, Hormuz and Qeshm served as crossroads for African, Arab, and European cultures; Afshar's project, "Speak the Wind," documents how this layered history and local beliefs about possessing winds shape islanders.
- In one portrait, Salimeh stands against a rug in Hormuz, her clothes echoing the island's mineral-rich sands. Afshar captured the image accidentally, noting that the connection between islanders and their landscape determines how they appear.
- Afshar's family remains on Qeshm, where she reports a US-Israeli strike hit a desalination plant vital to the water-scarce region. She describes hearing bombings that "cut through your body like an earthquake."
- As new conflict shapes the present, Afshar maintains that what has happened to these islands does not simply vanish; historical memory of Hormuz and Qeshm remains embedded in their cultural fabric.
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Salimeh is standing in her courtyard, with a carpet hanging behind her, still heavy for washing. Her clothes, printed in reds, roses and intense oranges, evokes the mineral-rich sands of the Iranian islands of Qeshm and the...
On Iran’s islands, an intriguing portrait carries new meaning
Islanders living in the Strait of Hormuz have long believed the wind to be a powerful entity. Now, amid war between the US, Israel, and Iran, their home in the strategic waterway is caught in a different kind of bluster.
·Atlanta, United States
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Total News Sources11
Leaning Left1Leaning Right0Center10Last UpdatedBias Distribution91% Center
Bias Distribution
- 91% of the sources are Center
91% Center
C 91%
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