The wind, it is said, can possess a person.

In the islands of the Strait of Hormuz, off the southern coast of Iran, a distinctive local culture has emerged as the result of many centuries of cultural and economic exchange. Its traces are seen not only in the material culture of these islands but also in the customs and beliefs of their inhabitants.

Central to these is a belief in the existence of winds that may bring misfortune, principally in the form of illness, and a corresponding ritual in which a hereditary cult leader speaks with the wind in one of many local tongues to negotiate its exit.

Wider beliefs about these winds permeate the culture but are seldom openly discussed – perhaps out of fear that language might manifest the invisible.

While their exact origins are unclear, the existence of similar beliefs and practices in many African countries suggests that the cult may have been brought to the south of Iran from southeast Africa through the Arab slave trade – an account that agrees with that of many locals who hold that the winds themselves travel from Ethiopia.

For locals and visitors, too, these beliefs resonate with the surreal landscape of the islands – a topography marked by strange valleys and statue-like mountains that have been carved by the wind over many millennia.

This project documents the history of these winds and the traces they have left on these islands and their inhabitants – a visible record of the invisible seen through the eye of the imagination.