Shams: A Building Called Sun Shams means “sun” in Arabic. This photograph shows the Shams Building in Raouché, Beirut, captured at dusk, with the moon appearing beside its facade. Coming from an architectural background, I was drawn to this quiet meeting between built form & celestial time. My first shift into photography began through buildings. I started by taking portraits of architecture instead of people, because architecture was the world I was born into & trained to read. Through photography, that world began to expand. In this image, architecture becomes more than a physical object. It becomes a surface that holds atmosphere, memory, & time. The title links the building’s name to the moon in the frame: a building called Sun, photographed under the presence of the moon. For me, this work marks a continuation in my practice: moving from the world of architecture into photography, while keeping the same sensitivity to form, place, proportion, & light.