Nation of Desire is an ongoing body of work exploring the Iranian diaspora here in the United States. The history between Iran and the United States has been largely adversarial for the better part of the last hundred years. In 1953 the Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a coup d’etat organized by the CIA and MI-6 as a response to the PM’s declaration of his intention to nationalize Iran’s oil industry. The pro-western monarch, Shah Pahlavi, would rule with the support of the west and his own secret police, SAVAK, until he was in turn overthrown in the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution. This abbreviated history is all people know about most Iranians who settle in the western world.

As the mixed son of a first generation Iranian immigrant, this history lesson was equal parts a birthright and burden for my family. My father was a college student in the US when the Islamic Revolution took place, and was left stateless and cut off from returning to his family as a result. The immediacy of his circumstance required a complete commitment to assimilation, but despite the distance created by political regimes we have maintained and carried signifying elements of our culture in the food we cook, the art and literature we consume, and the traditions we keep.

When one relocates or is relocated one has to decide what can be brought. There are the tangibles of luggage, clothes, family heirlooms, books, photographs, etc. There is also a question of the elements of culture one decides to uphold. My question when seeking out other Iranians to photograph was this: how do you hold your cultural identity while negotiating assimilation in the United States? My commitment to telling this story has become all the more timely in response to the ongoing feminist revolution happening in Iran today. It is my endeavor to make this work in solidarity with the aspirations of that revolution.