Around the year 2000 I came across photos by Peter Sanders that caught my attention. I saw people and places I had never seen before. Back then it was hard for a little teenager living in The Netherlands to follow Peter Sanders' work.
In 2005 I saw Peter at the Uniting for the Prophet conference in Wembley, he was busy with his photography. I did not had the courage to step up to him and say hi. This was the event where Peter shot the photo of Martin Lings who passed away ten days later. A photo that does really does justice.
Five year later I was back in UK for the Al-Hidayah conference by Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri in Conventry (United Kingdom). This is where I finally met Peter and Hafsa, his wife. I asked whether I could travel with him and learn. I realised then that it's much better to create a platform that would give other people like me also the opportunity to learn from him. This is where the idea was born to organise a journey that people can join to learn from Peter.
Peter agreed.
A year had gone by but I didn't really do much, until I moved to Istanbul. The day I landed I called Peter and asked him for a date to organise our first event in Istanbul. It became May 2012 and we named it Art of Seeing journey. It was a huge succes, about 30 enthusiastic students flew in from all over the world. I feel comfortable to say that it was a life changing event for everyone.
A few years later my wife Francine-Aicha joined the team and together we have kept developing the format. Now we have smaller groups, different locations and more instructors, but have never stopped.
