Aria Shahrokhshahi
Loose Joints
Aria Shahrokhshahi’s Wet Ground is a long-term photographic work made through repeated periods living and volunteering in Ukraine since 2019. Developed from within the conditions of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the book rejects the spectacle often associated with images of war, focusing instead on proximity, daily life and the unstable terrain of identity under pressure.
Shot in black and white, Shahrokhshahi’s photographs move between the domestic, the absurd, the performative and the unresolved. His attention to youth, subculture and improvised forms of survival reflects a generation living with threat while continuing to seek moments of resistance, pleasure and continuity. The title refers both to the artist’s survival of a rocket strike, where wet ground prevented detonation, and to the wider instability of a country undergoing violent transformation. Published by Loose Joints, Wet Ground is an engaged and embodied account of life shaped by conflict, care and refusal.
