Sixteen years ago, I photographed the Zoroastrian Gahanbar ceremony at Takht-e Soleyman, an ancient sanctuary where fire, water, and stone converge as sacred elements. What my camera witnessed was not only a ritual, but a living memory of resilience: people stepping down from buses, singing and clapping, moving rhythmically with frame drums in their hands. A little girl in traditional clothing carried a mirror with the image of Zoroaster, leading the gathering towards the sacred spring. There, priests recited prayers, hands were raised in devotion, incense and herbs filled the air, and fruits were shared as a gesture of unity.
In Zoroastrianism (the world’s oldest monotheistic faith) the six Gahanbars mark the stages of creation and embody gratitude for the natural world. After centuries of pressure and decline, the persistence of these ceremonies in Iran testifies to cultural continuity and survival. Takht-e Soleyman, once home to the great fire temple of Ādur Gušnasp, becomes not only a physical site of worship, but also a space where memory and identity are renewed.
This series was created at the very beginning of my photographic journey. Its rawness, including certain technical imperfections, has become part of its honesty, an unfiltered gaze that preserves the immediacy of that encounter. For me, these images are more than documentation: they are a mirror held up to a layered history, where devotion, nature, and community converge in acts of remembrance and resilience.
