Evidence by Diana Matar is a deeply intimate and haunting photobook about absence, memory and the impossibility of finding answers after a forced disappearance. Published by Schilt Publishing in 2014, the book emerged from Matar’s investigation into the disappearance of her father-in-law, Jaballa Matar, a Libyan opposition figure who was abducted in Cairo in 1990 and subsequently disappeared into the Gaddafi regime’s prison system. 
Rather than documenting violence directly, Matar photographs the places, landscapes and architectural fragments connected to it. Empty streets, blurred buildings, trees, walls and anonymous interiors become charged with an invisible presence. The absence of the missing person becomes the central subject of the photographs.
The book moves between photographs, personal writings and historical fragments, creating a fragmented narrative in which fact and memory constantly overlap. Matar deliberately avoids conventional photojournalism: the images are quiet, ambiguous and often almost dreamlike, reflecting the uncertainty experienced by those searching for someone who has simply vanished.
Evidence is ultimately a powerful meditation on political disappearance and its consequences beyond the individual. It is about dictatorship, but also about family, grief and the psychological weight of not knowing. Matar transforms the absence of physical evidence into a visual language of its own, making Evidence one of the most affecting documentary Photobooks of the 2010s.