“I’m from Italy. I came to Amsterdam be more free.”
“How are you more free here than in Italy?”
“For example, In Italy it’s illegal to smoke marihuana. I don’t understand why our government makes such a big deal out of it. I think they should be more worried about alcohol consumption, which in my opinion is a much bigger problem in our society.”

“In my family everyone practices a different religion.”
“What do you mean?”
“My aunt married a Jewish man and now she is orthodox. My other aunt is married to a man from Suriname and their daughter became Muslim. My grandmother was Christian so when she died we all gathered in church.”
“And what are you exactly?”
“Just a human being..”

“My boyfriend doesn’t speak Dutch but every Thursday he brings home the Metro Newspaper. Then he makes me translate your column, word by word..”

Together with my younger sister and pregnant mother we fled from Iran. I was only eleven years old but I remember everything very well. The first thing I saw when we arrived at the airport was a young couple making out in public. Something I wasn’t used to. We were placed in a refugee center and applied for citizenship. We kept moving from one refugee center to another without any clarity about the future. That changed autumn 2005. It was six a clock in the morning when the police woke us up. They said we had to leave the country and for the meantime we were placed in a detention center which is a fancy word for prison. The days passed by and after seven weeks they decided to review our case. When you go through something like that it’s hard to believe in the future. One year after we got released we received our residence permits. Slowly I started to move forward and make plans. I auditioned for theater school in Maastricht and surprisingly I got accepted. Even though I’m not a refugee anymore it still influences my life and also my work as an actor. For example, I’m now working on a production called ‘Nobody Home’. The title says it all. When you are a refugee you don’t belong anywhere.

If there is anything I have learned being a ‘humans’ photographer for the past two years, is that some don’t mind to be photographed and others just prefer to run away and hide in the kitchen cabinet.