Akbar Son of Emil

Artist Statement

Akbar's life carries the history of Hormuz Island in a deeply personal way. His father, Emil Jan Wale, a French-Lebanese man, came to the island to work at the red soil mine and later married Fatima, a local woman from Hormuz. Two years after Akbar was born, Emil left the island. Fatima later died, and Akbar grew up without the shelter of parents or close family.

This series follows Akbar in the landscape that shaped him: the red soil, the mine, the processing plant, and the quiet spaces around them. The work is not built around spectacle. It looks instead at the small gestures of a solitary life, where dignity, vulnerability, humor, and loneliness exist together. Through Akbar, the project becomes a portrait of belonging and abandonment, and of a man whose presence is inseparable from the island itself.