Agdam, No Man’s Land

Agdam was once a regional city on the eastern edge of Nagorno-Karabakh. In 1993, during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, the city was captured by Karabakh Armenian forces, its Azerbaijani population was displaced, and much of its urban fabric was looted and destroyed. After the 1994 ceasefire, Agdam remained largely empty for nearly three decades, close to a front line that divided Armenian and Azerbaijani forces.

What had been a city became a landscape of absence. Streets remained without traffic, houses stood without inhabitants, and public buildings survived as fragments detached from their original purpose. Here, the consequences of division were not marked by a single fence or wall, but by the disappearance of ordinary life from an entire urban landscape.

The 2020 ceasefire brought Agdam district back under Azerbaijani control, and reconstruction has since begun. These photographs hold an earlier moment that is already vanishing—a city suspended for decades between destruction and return, where political conflict became visible through emptiness itself.