My curiosity about Christianity did not disappear after my first visit to a church. Because photography was already such an important part of my life, I became increasingly interested in seeing and photographing churches.
At first, this interest could easily have been described as photographic. Churches offered architecture, light, symbols and an atmosphere that was very different from many of the places I normally photographed.
I remember travelling to see a very small church near Veresk, which was known as one of the smallest churches in Iran. The fact that I was willing to travel just to see and photograph a small church shows me now that the first experience in Isfahan had left more of an impression on me than I probably understood at the time.
Photography gave me a comfortable way to explore these places. I could enter a church as an observer without having to explain what I believed or make any decision about faith. That was important to me because I had already become uncomfortable with the idea of accepting religion simply because someone expected me to. I needed space to look, think and ask my own questions.
Gradually, my interest was no longer only about architecture or photographs. I became more curious about the people who gathered in these places and about what they actually believed. I wanted to understand why their relationship with faith seemed so different from what I had experienced growing up.
At that point I was still looking at Christianity from the outside. I had not yet reached the stage where faith became personal to me, and I did not know where any of these questions would eventually lead.
But something had already changed. My camera had first taken me into churches because I wanted to photograph them. Slowly, those same places began to make me curious about what existed beyond the photographs.
I began to look beyond the photographs.