Street Life

In Old Dhaka everyone is an entrepreneur. Unless you are very well off or very poor you probably own a small shop or workspace, like this man does, and focus your business on a very singular task.

The sheer number of people living and working in this historic inner city is so dense that no matter how simple your business idea — reselling used twine, collecting plastic, or making short-run deliveries on a bicycle cart — there will be more than enough customer demand to keep you busy day after day. Hard work will reward just about any venture you can think of. Enough to make you proud.

This photograph was taken on February 11th, 2020, weeks before the pandemic arrived in Bangladesh, bringing with it fear and panic to these very streets. This is otherwise an ordinary photograph of an ordinary day, but in the weeks and months of the pandemic, while the nation and its people lived in lockdown and isolation, it felt like the most beautiful photograph of the most wonderful day.

Tomorrow, whatever it was that felt so special about this day will become like a secret, hidden from all of us. It will all be ordinary again, just as it should. The photograph will be easily forgotten, and the day will feel so uneventful that it will seem like every other day of life.

Here in the midwestern highlands of Guatemala an indigenous, Mayan family sits on the corner outside the Hermanos de la Buena Esperanza office. They are not waiting for the office to open, they’re just waiting for a ride. This is a common but unofficial pick-up and drop-off corner for rides throughout the Quiché area.

Resting on a high plateau by the banks of the Tigris River is the old fortress city of Diyarbakir. Today it has grown to become a large, bustling modern-day city of over a million people, and one of the largest Kurdish populated regions in all of Türkiye.

This photo is taken within the walls of the original old city, a city that remains surrounded by 6 kilometers of an ominous 12-meter-high wall that’s build mostly of black basalt rock. The 2000-year-old wall is still intact, and it stands in stark contrast to the brightly painted buildings and vibrant life within.

The city of Diyarbakir has seen more than its fair share of unrest over the past years. It has been at the heart and heartbreak of the conflict between the Türk government and the Kurdish armed PKK. Although the armed clashes have subsided, there are few here who will tell you that everyday life has returned to normal, they will tell you only that life goes on.

Sometimes privacy is a luxury. Throughout the streets of even the largest cities in India there are communal water stations for people to wash their clothes and even bathe. No one is embarrassed. Nothing is a spectacle. It’s just the everyday of life.

The hard life and rugged terrain of Gaziantep province and city seem to have given rise to a distinct and exclusive motorcycle culture all its own. There isn’t any official club or membership, but the cast and crew all seem to have grown up on the hard knocks side of life, and everyone looks a little rough around the edges.

That said, there are no big, bad motorbikes around here to tear up the streets or wow the crowds. This 100cc Zorro is the motorcycle of choice, but the smaller 50cc Kuba is also quite popular, given its affordability. Around here, the motorcycle club culture status is obviously less about power and speed, and more about style and adornment.

This man has spent the afternoon tinkering outside this motorcycle accessories shop with his friends, and he has just finished an intricate weave of two bright, beaded ribbons around the handlebars of his already impressive Zorro. It’s finally looking just the way he likes it. The envy of the street.

The rugged terrain and unique motorcycle culture of Gaziantep city have given rise to a small group of lone, rogue bikers who make their living on their bikes, collecting recyclables from garbage bins and city dumps to then sell by weight at the recycling depot.

In other cities throughout Türkiye this is usually done by foot. Men and women wheel a cart up and down the streets, collecting only one of the many types of recyclables out there. But here in Gaziantep, these men, maybe ten or fifteen of them in total, have modified their motorcycle sidecars to be able to carry every type of recyclable they can find. They ride through the city day or night, covering as much ground as they can to earn as much money as they need.

You may not see it in this photograph, but this man, and the other collectors like him, are the stars of this city. They work for themselves and answer to no one; they love their bikes and the feeling of riding free through the city streets; and they’re able make a living without having to change their way of life or give up who they are. Not one bit.

This small band of drummers perform in the streets and parks of Santiago, gathering a crowd wherever they go. They play hard and loud and keep everyone entertained for a solid five-minute show before passing the hat and moving on to their next street corner venue. If you were to watch them play, you would easily see that these guys love what they do, and that the people of Santiago love it too.

Here, in the city of Urfa, everything but the blue sky is made from limestone.

Urfa city and province lay east of the Euphrates River, stretching along the Syrian border, and are home to a Kurdish majority population, with a still significant number Arab and Turkish residence. Urfa (now called Sanliurfa, “Glorious Urfa”) is built on rolling limestone hills that stretch far across the east. Inner-city homes are built from the limestone blocks that are carved out of hills that surround the outskirts of the city. More beautiful than the limestone city is that the hillside neighbourhoods from where the building blocks come are left with large, limestone caves that are a blessing to the region’s cattle ranchers who use them to house and protect their cattle from the hot sun.