All That We Have

All That We Have is a photographic series centered on a century-old local market in northern Iran, where people gather to sell what they have grown, raised, harvested, caught, or made themselves. Sometimes it is only a few eggplants, a basket of eggs, a handful of herbs, saved seeds, rice from a family field, or fish from nearby waters. These offerings may be small in quantity, but they carry the full weight of labour, memory, necessity, and care.

In this market, food is not anonymous. It has not yet been separated from the hands that cultivated it, the land that sustained it, or the lives that depend on it. Each item for sale is more than a commodity; it is a trace of a household, a season, an inheritance, and a way of enduring. What is exchanged here is not only produce, but evidence of effort, mutual reliance, and lived knowledge.

This work does not seek to romanticize rural life. Instead, it looks at the market as a living social space where dignity persists through modest means.

What appears before us is not simply what people sell. It is what they have been able to save, grow, carry, and offer. It is, quite literally, all that we have.