I grew up in Rochester, N.Y. in the heyday of Kodak and Xerox. This era overlapped with the wave of Iranians who immigrated to the US—those who rejected the men in black gowns with long white beards. The men who replaced one brand of tyranny with another. Men as corrupt as they come.

The timing was perfect: Kodak and Xerox were growing fast and needed engineers, and Iran was brimming with engineers searching for new beginnings. Somewhere safe and predictable to raise families. A place where a good education and hard work paid off.

I remember having pride for Kodak from a young age. Our family friends worked there—a tight crew with lots of mustaches. The fact that I was born on the same day that George Eastman patented the film roll camera and trademarked the Kodak brand (Sept. 4) felt like an omen.

I watched my dad obsess over making images. He regularly photographed and cataloged memories made is his vast new land, with film and equipment engineered by his people and manufactured in his city. He made photos mostly of everyday scenes. The feeling of being a foreigner never wore away—everything felt exotic compared to back home. For that reason, I think he saw his surroundings more deeply.

Composition came naturally to him, likely from his study of family albums from Tehran and Shiraz—when the occasion of making photos was a privilege not to be taken casually. We revisited the albums regularly, as if we were checking in with our relatives. I knew my grandparents from the stories my mom told us, and from visiting and revisiting a small stack of matte photographs of them.

The photos possessed a certain quality. The framing was clean and deliberate. The subjects were at ease, shoulders relaxed, holding natural expressions. Smiling wasn't so much a thing when being photographed then—too performative, not honest enough. It’s this approach that my father emulated no matter which side of the camera he was on—and it’s this approach that I now draw from when creating images.