My first interaction with the Afghan camera box was in Iran, when me and my friends took a group photo with the camera box in the mountain by Kurdish photographer. For years I have carried this photo and its aging as I get older.
In 2018, I was commissioned by B side festival to do a project in Portland, UK so I decided to build an Afghan camera box. My camera was built by Bruce Aitken in Matlock, Derbyshire and since then I have been traveling around the UK to take portraits of local residents. I have collected more than 300 portraits and I am hoping to make a book out of all this journey with the camera box.
What I love the most about the box camera is the slow process that helps to connect with your subject to have a conversation. I decided to take this process further so I took a workshop with Andrew Sanderson to learn more about hand colouring and paper negative and I have been experimenting with paper negative and hand colouring.
