At 250 meters below ground in an Iranian mine, a mining engineer asked me to turn off my headlamp for three minutes — and in that absolute darkness, I understood that light is not merely a tool for seeing; light is what shapes our understanding of life and of photography itself.
Between Darkness and Light is a long-term documentary project about the miners of Iran — a country holding more than 7% of the world's mineral reserves, whose workers extract the raw materials of modern civilization from the earth, yet live in silence and disappear in silence.
Through years of sustained presence in lead and zinc mines across the Iranian desert, I encountered men who sold their protective milk rations to cover family expenses, who attributed sudden suffocation to spirit possession, and who descended each morning into depths from which they might not return. The Yurt mine explosion in 2017 and the Tabas disaster in 2024 claimed the lives of nearly a hundred men; my own grandfather lost his life in oil and gas extraction.
This project begins where the news ends — in the labor, dignity, and love that lives deep underground — and carries with it one question: after death, what remains of them?
01
02
0304
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24Negin Mohamadifard is a documentary photographer based in Isfahan, Iran. Her work focuses on long-term projects that explore labor, memory, and the lives of those who remain unseen.
Her project Between Darkness and Light documents the miners of Iran — men who descend daily into lead and zinc mines across the Iranian desert, extracting the raw materials of modern civilization while living in silence.
She has been working on this project for several years, building sustained relationships with mining communities in some of Iran's most remote landscapes.