Where Faith Rests

In the shrine’s dim hours, women drift between ritual and sleep—hands on gold, bodies on carpets. My lens traces the fragile line where faith dissolves into exhaustion, and silence holds more than prayer.

This project was photographed inside the shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, Iran, during the early hours between 2 am and 6 am. As a woman who could only enter this space under the restrictions of compulsory hijab, I approached it not to depict holiness, but to witness and record the raw human presence within a site of devotion.

The series focuses on women—pilgrims waiting in lines, whispering prayers, reaching toward the shrine, or sleeping on the mosque floor until morning. These images reveal intimate gestures of fatigue, longing, and faith, showing a spectrum of emotions that oscillate between surrender and resistance.

Rather than presenting the shrine as a purely sacred place, the project highlights the contradictions of belief and control, spirituality and exhaustion, ritual and vulnerability. By photographing discreetly, I aimed to capture fleeting expressions—moments of intensity that are rarely visible in official or state-sanctioned representations of religious spaces.

Ultimately, this work is less about religion itself and more about the human search for connection, hope, and relief inside a highly charged environment. It is also a reflection of my own conflicted position: both an insider and outsider, documenting a space I was forced into, yet deeply moved by the resilience and presence of the women I encountered.