Praxinoscope

Kurdish cultural identity has been under attack for over 100 years, ever since 1916 when Kurdistan was split among the countries of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria by European powers. The Shadows of Kurdistan photographic project seeks to explore the dimensions and depth of Kurdish culture and their political situation, where there is a civil war in three of the four countries. It seeks to illuminate what can be lost without peace, but also to show that war is not only part of the Kurdish experience, and that there is still a full life and vibrant culture.

All Kurdish communities have undergone assimilation; we have not been allowed to live our culture freely and learn our language or history. This project seeks to help discover the common human cultural identity of the Kurdish people. An additional goal of this project is underscoring the importance of respecting all cultural identities, not to divide us, but to foster understanding among people.

The thirty million Kurds have not seen much peace over the century since partition, for us Kurds the peace is like the story in the book by Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot. But in the background of war, there is a strong and deep heritage. These images capture the culture, daily life, political situation and landscapes of Kurdistan. The project has taken a slow journalism approach to photography, staying in the areas and going deep into the nuances of the situation for each community.

Human history can be told in many different ways; with this project, my goal is to show and talk about Kurdistan by photography. 

The following pictures are a selection of 4 vertical images from my project “Cuban Landscape” a compilation ment to show the struggles of cubans from Jung to old.

This long-term collaborative documentary project offers a deeply personal

perspective on the lives of three teenage girls who fled the war in Ukraine in

early 2022, arriving in the UK with their mothers.

In unfamiliar surroundings, they face the ongoing challenge of rebuilding their lives in

a foreign land while quietly navigating resilience amid the universal struggles of

adolescence — the need to be seen, understood, and accepted.

This project is not merely a documentation; it is a collaboration. The girls often

suggest the frames, poses, costumes, and styling themselves. They want to look like

any other teenagers — to create beautiful, expressive images that reflect how they

wish to be perceived. They are full of life and inner beauty, they are playful and

engaged. But the weight of the situation back home always drags behind.

The enigmatic character of their inner worlds is hidden behind cinematic

compositions and the luminous beauty of youth — reminding us that the heaviest

burdens are often carried behind a smile.

Together with me, they tell their stories as partners in the project, offering an honest,

intimate view of adaptation, courage, and resilience.

In this edit, I’ve included an image of Antony Gormley’s statue that stands on the

English shore not far from where we live. This solitary figure faces Europe,

submerged by the high tide twice a day. His quiet melancholy reflects the ever-

present longing for a home left behind in war.

The Offline series began as an observation of solitude within familiar spaces—where people leave behind their public selves and exist alone with their thoughts. In a world that demands constant connectivity, these women find themselves in a different kind of disconnection—one that removes them from external perception, social expectations, and perhaps even from themselves. 

They are portrayed in their homes, caught in moments that might otherwise go unnoticed: a pause between movements, a late-night cigarette, a gaze lost in the window. Fleeting, mundane, almost indifferent moments. Yet, these moments carry a quiet weight. Each figure seems to linger between here and elsewhere, engaged in a dialogue with something unspoken. 

The series stands in contrast to the curated aesthetics of social media, where both personal space and self-image are carefully constructed for external perception. Here, the home is not a backdrop for self-presentation but a site of internal exposure. The women exist exactly as they are in that moment—unpolished, unposed, unfiltered. Their clothing is incidental, their expressions unguarded, their presence untouched by the need to impress or perform. Photography here does not capture an idealized moment but lingers on what remains unsaid: a quiet refusal of spectacle, a confrontation with solitude, a space where disconnection becomes its own presence. 

Rather than impose a narrative, the work invites the viewer into a space of quiet tension—where stillness is not emptiness but something unresolved, a pause that extends beyond the frame. 

Time is one of the most enthralling subjects that captivates me. My experience of it is neither fixed nor linear, though reason insists on measuring it as such.

There are days that unfold like months, and years that vanish in the span of an hour; seconds that bleed into endless minutes; present, past and future locked in a ceaseless dance of becoming. Time is circular. I say this not with scientific intent, nor to assert any scholarly claim, but simply because it reveals itself to me in that form.

There are moments when I feel myself a child once more, memories returning in waves; others when I glimpse a future not yet lived, pulling me forward with quiet urgency. At times I feel older than the world itself; at others, I observe my surroundings as though I had already stepped beyond them. I know not everyone senses time in this way. And yet, linear time is merely a framework — a construct we use to navigate the fragile path between our alpha and our omega.

The four images I have chosen for this modest essay are a meditation on time: the relentless time that lays itself upon our being; the time of blossoming and creation; the time of rupture and revolt; and the time of return — to reflection, to solitude, to the origin.

Within this timeline, self-representation becomes the thread of a living performance — one shaped by spatial light and by the eternal quest to balance shadow and radiance in our daily existence. Through symbolic and poetic gestures, I attempt to rewrite my own inner knowing, inscribing it upon a timeline and a space that are mine alone — both deeply personal and achingly intimate.

Leiria, June 2025, Carla de Sousa

© 2025 Carla de Sousa