Photographs are a recurring symbol in The Return that embody the fragmented, elusive, and often speculative nature of truth in the face of enforced disappearance. Each image represents an attempt to capture a fixed reality but ultimately underscores the uncertainty at the heart of Matar’s quest. The most enigmatic instance is the photograph of Jaballa found in the possession of a blind, amnesiac prisoner in Abu Salim, an artifact that offers a concrete connection but whose meaning is entirely lost: “Why? Who was he to Father? The prisoner did not know” (12). This photograph symbolizes a piece of evidence severed from its context. In contrast, the age-progressed forensic portrait Matar commissions represents a manufactured truth, a scientific attempt to bridge the gap of time. While Matar calls it credible, Ziad immediately rejects it as inaccurate, highlighting the conflict between plausible fiction and the family’s deeply personal, internal image of their father.

Amal's photographs of her brother Izzo offer a different kind of fragmentation. The image of a 10-month-old Izzo on Jaballa's knee, taken just before the family was torn apart, is a moment of intimacy that captures, unknowingly, the last trace of a life still whole. Unlike Jaballa, Izzo's death is marked with a real photograph that shows his fatal wound; the contrast between this picture and the false picture of an older Jaballa highlights the lack of closure Matar's family has compared to Amal's.

Later, the photographs of the young men killed in the 2011 revolution, displayed in the Benghazi courthouse, transform photographs from a private token of memory into a public instrument of political witness and mourning. They represent the collective demand for accountability that grows from individual loss.