In Gorno-Badakhshan, the state has sealed its internal borders, severed roads, and muted voices, turning the mountains into an open-air prison. Distance becomes a mechanism of control imposed on a territory perceived as unstable, defiant, and suspect.

The uprisings in Khorog (2022) have left behind a wounded landscape. Arbitrary arrests, executions, and disappearances unfolded with calculated brutality, leaving absent bodies and fractured memories. The marks of repression remain visible in abandoned homes, rusting metal along the roadsides, and in gazes that avoid the camera.

The Pamiri Ismaili community, long relegated to the margins of the state, now endures a deepening abandonment. Deprived of protection, representation, and prospects, it erodes under the combined weight of fear, poverty, and forced exile. The young depart, the elders remain, custodians of a fragile identity threatened with erasure.

Following the M41 road, these images seek to hold what is disappearing: a territory isolated by force, a community kept at a distance, and the remnants of a life that persists despite the state's abandonment, suspended in the quiet anticipation of an inevitable departure and a youth shaped by violence.