While searching for his grandfather’s roots, Fazal Sheikh travelled through Nepal, Bhutan, and Pakistan. When he arrived to the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, he found the area was populated by over one million Afghan refugees who settled in towns that had been established after the Soviet invasion of their country in 1979.

The photograph portrays a mother who is holding a photograph of her son, who passed away at the age of eighteen, while fighting the Soviets in 1986. This image captures photography’s ability to speak of life and loss, and to preserve and convey a fragment of fragile memories: what is remembered is spared from oblivion, what is forgotten is abandoned.