For years, Tehran was an unfamiliar and transitory city to me—an unsettled place to which I felt no sense of belonging. Like the three million daily commuters, I entered the city each morning and left it by night. Tehran is a city in motion, in constant search, restless and without pause; its streets are meant for passing through, not for staying.
But everything changed in 2016, when I became a resident of Tehran. The experience of living in this city felt like confronting a device with no user manual. My camera, which has always been a tool for connecting with the world around me, became my guide once again. As a flâneur—who, as Susan Sontag puts it, uses the camera as an instrument for wandering—I began roaming the crowded streets. Amid the ever-flowing crowd, I stood still and watched. I tried to discover the city, to look, to connect.
Tehran became a vast stage for me, filled with countless anonymous actors; and I was merely a spectator, on the sidelines. This act of observing, with all the tension and contradictions of the city, was a joyful experience. In this photo series, I’ve tried to capture those fleeting moments—the movement of people, the play of light and color, and the rhythm of life on the streets. It is an attempt to create a brief pause within the flow, and to claim, through my gaze, a city that once felt unfamiliar.