Built for Work

I spent the first years of my life in Shahr-e Mes-e Sarcheshmeh, a town built by the National Iranian Copper Industries Company for employees of the nearby mine, where my father worked. After my family moved to Rafsanjan, I continued returning to visit relatives. As a child, I saw Sarcheshmeh as a modern and orderly place. Returning with a camera years later, I began to understand it differently, as a town whose layout, housing and public spaces were organised around industrial labour.

The photographs follow the repeated houses, divided streets, gates, metal enclosures and alterations made by residents over time. These individual additions interrupt the original order without completely removing it. The town remains recognisable as a planned environment, but it also carries the accumulated decisions of the people who have lived there. Through this project, I revisit a place formed by both personal memory and industrial planning. I am interested in how a town designed for work gradually becomes a home, and how everyday life modifies structures built according to a collective plan.