In 1980 Iraq invaded the newly formed Islamic Republic of Iran, initiating a brutal eight-year war that left an estimated one million Iranian men and boys dead. Surviving the lost soldiers is a generation of mothers who are the subject of photographer Newsha Tavakolian’s series "Mothers of Martyrs." Tavakolian’s portraits of the women, posed with photographs of their sons, are shot in a straight forward and spare style that heightens the sense of sorrow generated not just by the notion of death but the stark contrast between the aging women and their forever-young sons.

Yet, as the artist notes in in her series statement, the mothers’ loss is tempered by pride in their sons’ sacrifice and status as martyrs. Within Shiʿa Islam, the state religion of Iran, martyrs are revered due to their connection through self-sacrifice with Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson who was martyred in 680 AD. Here Tavakolian makes this link between the dead soldier and Hussein explicit by framing the mother against a partially obscured banner of Persian text where we see the word "Muharram," the month of Hussein’s death. Tavakolian’s powerful series highlights an important bridge between past and present that helps to define contemporary Iranian culture.