Night, Silence, and Desert

From the photographer: “Three years ago, on a mesmerizing winter night deep in the Lut Desert, I found myself in a vast expanse where there was no sign of civilization for tens of kilometers. The Lut Desert (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), with its endless horizons and haunting silence, enveloped our small group of four. In the stillness of the post-midnight hours, I wandered a few hundred meters away from my companions, climbing a large sand dune—the very one you see in this image—and sat there, alone.

In that moment, everything felt motionless, as if time itself had frozen, and I was left alone with the vastness of the sky. There was no fear, no sense of unease—only a profound tranquility and silence that seemed to seep into the deepest parts of my soul. What I experienced in those moments has remained etched within me, like a timeless engraving. It felt as if earth and sky had become one, and I, sitting alone amidst this vastness, knew that everything had stilled and was forever imprinted in my memory.

I captured these two images two hours apart, before and after moonrise in the Lut Desert.”