All those nails were too much for my eyes

This project explores the complex bond between mother and daughter, shaped by love, tension, and patriarchal pressures in Iran. Through a personal lens, it reflects women’s overlooked emotional experiences under tradition and culture.

The project “All Those Nails Were Too Much for My Eyes” explores my relationship with my mother, a traditional and religious woman in Iran who never wanted a daughter. My mother grew up in a patriarchal family without any brothers, where my grandfather considered not having sons and having daughters a source of shame. This cultural and familial framework placed immense pressure on her life and shaped her experience of motherhood and the role of women in the family. I was born after four brothers, and my presence brought both joy and a new burden into her life.

In first moments of discovering photography during adolescence, the camera became a means to capture my mother, as if it served as a bridge to explore and understand our relationship. Since then, I have continued photographing her, documenting the layers of love, tension, and history between us.

This project presents a personal portrait of the mother-daughter relationship, a bond that, according to philosophers and psychologists such as John Bowlby and Donald Winnicott, is the most fundamental human connection. It shapes our experience of the world and others, and in my case, it reflects both love and attachment, as well as the social pressures and constraints that marked my upbringing.

My personal perspective opens a window onto a broader issue in the Global South: the lives of women and girls growing under traditional and cultural restrictions, whose emotional and personal experiences are often overlooked. Through this work, I attempt to represent the mother-daughter relationship in all its complexity, from love and care to conflict, silence, and unresolved pain.