My first real encounter with Christianity happened through photography. A friend from a photography group invited me to photograph a Christian ceremony at Maryam Church in Isfahan, and until that day I had never been inside a church.
I went there mainly because I was curious about the ceremony and because, as a photographer, I was always interested in unfamiliar places, people and rituals. I did not go there searching for faith, and I had no idea that the experience would remain in my mind for years afterwards.
What affected me most was not simply the church building or the visual side of the ceremony. It was the people. I remember looking around and thinking that they had created something beautiful together. There was a sense of family in the way they gathered, prayed and took part in the service. The atmosphere felt peaceful and welcoming, and the way the ceremony was conducted, the prayers and the spiritual feeling of the church were very different from the religious environments I had known before.
I think the biggest difference was that I did not feel the same sense of obligation. Until then, much of my experience of religion had been connected with rules and pressure, but in that church I saw another way in which faith could be lived.
Nothing dramatic happened that day. I did not suddenly decide that I wanted to become a Christian, and I still knew very little about Christianity. But when I left the church, the experience did not leave me.
For the first time, Christianity no longer felt completely distant or unfamiliar. I had seen something that made me curious, not because someone was asking me to believe it, but because I wanted to understand it for myself.
I wanted to understand it for myself.