Mehrdad Mosaferi's 'Tide' Documents Daily Life Along the Persian Gulf

Photographer Mehrdad Mosaferi, born and raised in Bandar Abbas on the northern shores of the Persian Gulf, presents Tide, a photographic project examining the relationship between coastal inhabitants and the sea. Rather than treating the water as distant scenery, Mosaferi draws on childhood memory to portray swimming, fishing, crossing the water and watching the horizon as shared everyday gestures. The work weaves his own recollections together with those of other residents. While the Persian Gulf frequently appears in news coverage tied to politics and energy trade, Mosaferi shifts focus to daily lives, expectations and dreams shaped in the quiet of the shoreline; political and economic forces remain in the background as often invisible presences that have molded collective experience and memory. The tide anchors the project as a metaphor for arrival and departure, hope and absence, permanence and passage, echoing how life on the coast moves between change and continuity, waiting and hope. Tide forms part of the larger Persian Gulf project, conceived as a living visual archive of the region's stories, landscapes, traditions and human experiences — a body of work that continues to expand through new chapters and encounters rather than a concluded survey.