Behrouz Boochani – Manus Island

Hoda Afshar
Iran/Australia
1983

Behrouz Boochani – Manus Island
from the series Remain
2018
inkjet archival print
Place made
Manus Island, Papua New Guinea
Medium
inkjet archival print
Edition
2/3
Dimensions
129.0 x 103.0 cm (image)
Credit line
Gift of Mary Choate through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 2022
Accession number
20223Ph289
Signature and date
to be transcribed
Media category
Photograph
Collection area
Australian photographs
Copyright
Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane

  • Born in Tehran, Iran, in 1983, during the period of the Iran–Iraq war, Hoda Afshar grew up during a turbulent period in Iranian history. She studied photography and began her documentary photographic practice while living in Iran, drawn to the potency of the medium, with its ‘ability to document and make visible hidden realities’.1 Afshar emigrated to Australia in 2007, where she continued to practise as a visual artist in the fields of photography and moving image.

    This photograph of Kurdish–Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani is from Afshar’s powerful series Remain, from 2018. The photographs and dual-screen video resulted from Afshar’s travel to the Australian Government’s off-shore detention facility on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, where she worked collaboratively with some of the asylum-seekers to create their portraits. At that time the men had been detained in limbo for five or more years, after initially attempting to seek asylum in Australia. Afshar says of this series:

    the work involves these men retelling their individual and shared stories through staged images, words, and poetry, and bearing witness to life in the Manus camps: from the death of friends and dreams of freedom, to the strange air of beauty, boredom, and violence that surrounds them on the island. 2

    Afshar photographed some of the men with elements from nature, such as fire, water, earth and air, to represent their emotional states. Boochani is shown bare-chested, looking directly at the camera,  with fire and smoke in the background, in an image that captures both his vulnerability and strength. Boochani wrote an account of his experiences on his mobile phone, with the manuscript smuggled out of Manus Island and subsequently published as the book No friend but the mountains.

    Julie Robinson, Senior Curator, Prints, Drawings & Photographs

    1. Hoda Afshar quoted in Nur Shkembi, ‘Hoda Afshar’, Artist Profile, issue 45, 2018, accessed 9 May 2022, https://artistprofile.com.au/hoda-afshar/

    2. Hoda Afshar, artist’s statement in The End/Future of History, exhibition room texts, Substation, Melbourne, 1 November – 14 December 2019, p. 3, accessed 9 May 2022, https://www.hyphenatedprojects.com/uploads/1/2/0/7/120777007/the_end-future_of_ history_artist_statements.pdf 




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