Iran is the first country outside the US where I ever collected interviews. I remember how nervous I was. This was over ten years ago. There hadn’t been a nuclear deal yet. I didn’t have a ‘fixer.’ I hadn’t even been working long enough to know what a ‘fixer’ was. I’d been assigned a full-time personal tour guide—a requirement for all Americans. He’d prepared a packed itinerary of museums and historical sites for us to visit. I still remember his surprise when I said: ‘Actually, I just want to stop random people on the street.’ But miraculously he agreed to the pivot. And over the next ten days we approached well over one hundred people. I’d spent so much time worrying that no Iranian would want to speak to an American with a camera. But of the hundred people I approached—only three refused my request. That’s the first thing you notice: the hospitality. The average Iranian is so welcoming: please come in and eat, please sit and have tea. It’s why I returned for a second time in 2016. There’s an openness there. A long history of humanism, art, and scientific discovery; it’s baked deep in the culture. But that openness is suppressed by an empowered minority. Iran is not a country that looks or sounds like its leaders. It’s much more youthful. Much more liberal. And it’s much, much more female. The current protests are being led by young women, of course. Because they’re living under laws created by old religious men. At the end of my first trip, I was getting frantic emails from well-meaning people, warning me to leave. Hardline journalists had begun calling for me to be stopped, from the unspeakable sin—of photographing Iranian women. It can be difficult to know exactly what is happening in Iran right now. We know the government is struggling to crack down on the largest protests they’ve ever seen. We know that many young women have been killed. It can be hard to know how to help. But in a letter to The Times this weekend, A. Maziar Zafari said the protestors need support from ‘all artists in open and democratic societies.’ So I’d like to say, especially to the young women risking the most: we see you, we hear you, and you continue to inspire us.