Found Cultura ("we," "us," "our") is a documentary project publishing stories, portraits, places, photographs and video about people and cultures around the world. This page explains what information we collect when you visit this website, why, and what choices you have. It applies to everyone visiting Found Cultura, wherever in the world you're visiting from — we don't restrict access by country or region, and nothing on this page changes that.
Our purpose & principles
Found Cultura is an independent, collaborative documentary and storytelling project. Its purpose is to share human stories and cultural experiences, encourage understanding between people and cultures, and reflect the idea that humanity is connected beyond borders. In pursuing that, we try to hold to a few principles:
- Respect for human dignity.
- Respect for local cultures, traditions, and communities.
- No intention to exploit, humiliate, abuse, or intentionally harm anyone.
- Stories and images are presented honestly and respectfully.
- Particular care is taken with children and vulnerable people.
- We aim to obtain appropriate permission or consent when it is reasonably required.
- We respect applicable laws and the rights of the people we photograph, film, or write about.
These are values we hold ourselves to, not a legal claim or exemption. They don't replace, and aren't a substitute for, any consent, permission, or legal requirement that applies to a specific story, photograph, or individual.
Who is responsible for this website
Found Cultura is an independent, collaborative documentary and storytelling project, founded and developed by Mohammad Nari Zadeh. Collaboration with people from different places, cultures and backgrounds is an essential part of the project — but that collaborative nature doesn't make Found Cultura a company, agency, or registered organization; it remains an independent project.
For privacy questions or requests concerning this website, the responsible contact is:
Mohammad Nari Zadeh
Luxemburger Str. 88
50674 Köln
Germany
Email: foundcultura@gmail.com
Information you send us directly
If you use the Contact form, we collect the name, email address and message you type in, and store them in our database so we can read and reply to you. Nothing else about you is captured through that form. We keep contact messages until a site administrator deletes them; there's no automatic expiry yet. We don't sell, rent, or share this information with third parties, and we don't use it for advertising.
The form also has a hidden field that's invisible to real visitors and exists only to catch automated spam submissions — if it's filled in, the submission is silently discarded and nothing is stored.
When you submit the form, your IP address is checked briefly, in server memory only, to prevent abuse (limiting how many messages can be sent in a short period). It is not written to our database, not linked to your message, and not retained afterward.
Cookies and local storage
This site does not set advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. What it does use:
- A small piece of browser storage that remembers whether you accepted or declined analytics (see below). This is strictly necessary for the consent banner itself to work and isn't used for anything else.
- If you log in to the Found Cultura admin dashboard, a session cookie keeps you signed in. This only applies to site administrators, not regular visitors.
Analytics (Google Analytics 4)
Found Cultura is built to optionally use Google Analytics 4, gated behind the same consent-first approach described above — but it is not currently active on this deployment. If it's switched on in the future, the analytics script will still only load after you actively accept the consent banner.
When active and after consent, analytics data (such as pages viewed, approximate location derived from your IP address, device and browser type) is processed by Google LLC as an independent data processor, under Google's own Privacy Policy. We don't combine analytics data with the contact information described above.
Embedded content and other third parties
Where a Story, Person or Place has a real uploaded photograph, it's served from our own server (or, if the site owner has configured it, a third-party storage provider acting purely as a file host). Placeholder imagery used for content that doesn't have a real photograph yet is loaded from Picsum, a third-party placeholder-image service — loading any image, from any server, necessarily exposes your IP address to that server as a normal part of how the web works.
Where a Video entry links to YouTube, the video is embedded directly from youtube.com. Playing an embedded YouTube video may set cookies from Google/YouTube, under YouTube's own terms and privacy policy — this isn't something Found Cultura controls.
Some entries embed a photo or video from YouTube, Instagram, TikTok or Facebook. These are never copied to our server: they stay on the original platform. Nothing from that platform is loaded until you press "Load media" (or have chosen to always load that platform's media on this device, which is remembered only in your browser). Once loaded, the platform receives your IP address and may set cookies or collect data under its own terms and privacy policy.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to ask us what personal data we hold about you, to correct it, to have it deleted, to restrict or object to how it's used, or to receive a copy of it in a portable format. Where analytics consent applies, you can withdraw it at any time as described above. To exercise any of these rights, contact us at foundcultura@gmail.com. If you're in the EU/EEA and believe we haven't handled your data properly, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the data protection supervisory authority in your country or region.
Children
Found Cultura is not directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from children.
Global access
Found Cultura is published for a worldwide audience. We don't geographically restrict, block, or redirect visitors based on location, and this policy doesn't change that.
Changes to this policy
We may update this page as the site or its features change. The "Last updated" date at the top will reflect the most recent revision.