Salih Basheer on The Return: An Interview on Sudan and the Meaning of Home
Through photographs, drawings and personal accounts, Salih Basheer discusses his new photobook The Return: a conversation about war in Sudan, displacement and the ties that endure in exile.
“Every time I open the map, I try to work out whether our house in Khartoum has been damaged or is still intact. Unfortunately, the map has not been updated: it still shows things as they were before. I can even see the cars still parked in the courtyard.” Mujahid’s testimony, one of many featured in the publication, reveals the rupture between a remembered place and a present that cannot be verified. This rupture runs through The Return to its final pages, where writer Joshua Craze’s valuable contribution highlights how ruins hold, above all, the possibility of rebuilding. Salih Basheer’s story is both personal and collective, shaped by distance and the experience of exile—themes that take on an urgent significance in the context of the war in Sudan, ongoing since April 2023. An Associate at Magnum Photos, Salih was born in Omdurman in 1995 and gained international recognition in 2023 with 22 Days in Between, a book that marks a significant moment in contemporary Sudanese photography.
Today, the overconsumption of images seems to have heightened both our sensitivity to the suffering of others and a form of passive apathy, confined to scrolling through images while evading responsibility and concrete action: our reaction to images also depends on how we choose to respond to what we see and know. In this sense, the severe humanitarian crisis and the neocolonial dynamics exacerbated by the clash between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces seem to remain all too marginal within the current geopolitical landscape.
The Return emerges within this context, bringing together photography, memory and psychological repercussions. The work explores the traces conflict leaves on people, the ruptures caused by displacement and the difficulty of maintaining a connection to a place from afar. Within a compact, tactile format, the documentary dimension is seamlessly interwoven with the intimate: the gazes in the portraits are suspended between the present and an uncertain future; the black-and-white images of places evoke an absent presence, as do the spontaneously drawn sketches. The collages feature recurring passages of red, while words and testimonies accompany nightmares and fears of a road left behind, between deep roots and erased coordinates. “The return” becomes a confrontation with what has changed, both in the landscape and in those who move through it, and it is from this tension between geography and identity that the conversation with Basheer takes shape.
The return seems to be as much geographical as personal. What have you discovered about Sudan and yourself by engaging with your country again through photography?
In The Return, the geographical and personal dimensions are inseparable; the physical territory, with its topography, political context, climate and everyday realities, profoundly shapes the character of those who inhabit it. The project became a journey exploring the complex relationship between the land and human presence, and how political conflicts and wars can sever this bond.
When conflict broke out in Khartoum in April 2023, engaging with the country’s reality through photography became a way of documenting how these geopolitical events directly transform human experience. Returning to Sudan and working in the very places affected by conflict was not simply an exercise in observing from a distance; it was an attempt to understand my personal connection to a landscape undergoing destruction. Geography helps define identity, and confronting a territory in constant transformation forced me to reflect on how deeply my personal memories and sense of self are bound to the land.
In your work, war emerges more through what it leaves within people than through direct images of conflict. Why did you choose to focus on this more intimate dimension?
I am not a war photographer; my primary interest is in people and their lived experiences. Although conflicts have temporal boundaries, a clearly defined beginning and end, the scars and trauma inflicted on human beings extend far beyond those dates; trauma persists long after the fighting ends and is often passed down from generation to generation.
The impact of war on people is not limited to the direct violence of the front line; rather, it lies in the long-term emotional and physical consequences they carry within them. By prioritising human experience, taking time to listen to individual testimonies, documenting the enduring burden of displacement and focusing on the long-term consequences rather than the events of the conflict itself, this work highlights the lasting inner transformations that persist even after physical violence has ended.
Photographing people who have experienced the trauma of displacement also means entering a space of profound vulnerability. How do you draw the line between the need to tell a story and respect for the person living through it?
I come from Sudan and experienced the outbreak of this war first-hand. When the conflict began, I was in the country and embarked on a journey of displacement and survival similar to that of many other Sudanese people. Although each person’s journey out of the country involved different routes and experiences, we all share a collective narrative; it is a deeply personal story, but a public one too.
When working with personal stories within the community, a sense of mutual understanding and empathy emerges naturally. People recognise that we share the same background, context and lived reality, creating a space of trust in which they feel safer. Underpinning all of this is respect for other people’s stories and a commitment to treating them with dignity, grounded in the deep understanding that comes from having experienced displacement first-hand.
This attention to individual experience is also reflected in the book’s formal choices, where photography enters into dialogue with other visual languages.
In the publication, you alternate photographs, drawings and collages, moving from very concrete images to more enigmatic ones. How did you develop this dialogue between different visual forms and languages?
My use of different visual languages has evolved throughout my artistic practice. Given the deeply personal nature of my work, relying exclusively on the camera can sometimes feel limiting; there are inner states, memories and emotional nuances that the camera alone cannot fully capture.
When I reach that limit, I turn to other forms of expression, introducing elements such as analogue collage, drawing, painting or writing. Although photography remains the foundation of my work, incorporating these interventions gives me the freedom to express those complex, abstract emotions.
After The Return, what does the word “home” mean to you today?
The concept of “home” is quite complex for me. I first left Sudan at eighteen to study in Egypt, where I lived for almost eight years. Since then, I have spent the following years living and travelling in various countries. Along the way, I have built relationships, friendships and a sense of belonging in many different places.
Although Sudan remains my primary home, rooted in my identity, my family, my language and my culture, my experiences of living in different geographical settings have transformed what this word means to me personally. Home is no longer just a physical place; it has become an inner sense of belonging, neither here nor there, but everywhere at once.
A curator, cultural project developer and writer working primarily between Italy and Paris. Her research lies at the intersection of contemporary practices, visual cultures and collective processes, focusing on social, historical, anthropological and decolonial issues, as well as the dynamics between bodies, spaces and communities as sites of critical engagement. She studied Modern Literature at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan before completing a master’s degree in Visual Cultures and Curatorial Practices at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, with a dissertation exploring postcolonialism in Brazil through Oswald de Andrade’s Anthropophagic Manifesto. Her education also includes an Erasmus exchange at Université Paris 8 Vincennes–Saint-Denis and participation in Campo25, the curatorial programme at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin. She has collaborated with institutions including the Institut du Monde Arabe, the Centre Pompidou and Magnum Photos.
