Portraits

This young girl and the children around her all live by the river and are playing together in street. The look in her eyes and on her face is no accident, she really does know something about life that the rest of us are still trying to figure out. Let’s hope she grows up with strength enough to guide us all one day.

If anyone among us is better suited to balance these scales of justice, speak now.

At the edge of the factory district in the city of Gaziantep, this man, and dozens like him, have all set up table-top shops that line the sidewalk. They come here every weekend to sell their personal collection of hidden treasures in hope of turning a profit. For this man, everything on the table is about a dollar, give or take a Türk Lira. Except for the lemons. The lemons are for lunch.

This lovely woman lives and works in the heart of old Phnom Penh in a tucked away neighbourhood that’s wedged between Charles de Gaulle Boulevard and the Orussey market. If you’re not looking for it you’ll pass right by the narrow opening to its network of laneways that tie the community together, and you’ll remain stuck on the busy streets that run unsuspecting circles around it day after day. Her neighbourhood is like a tiny, isolated world in the giant solar system of the city. For most of her life she’s been right here at the centre of it, older and wiser now, and loved by all.

This young man lives in the inner city neighbourhood of Barangay 310. It is a community of winding laneways and tightly packed buildings that surround the Manila City Jail, and it may very well be one of the most challenging places in the city for a young person to grow up.

The more time I spent here, and with this young man, the more I realized just how poorly I would fair in life were this the neighbourhood where I grew up in. I can’t imagine how I would ever find my way or become my best. But the more I got to know this young man, the more I could see his strength and determination to become the person he longs to be. His is the kind of strength and determination I have never known, or ever needed to look for.

This man works at the docks by the river, loading small boats with cargo for transport to neighbouring villages. He doesn’t carry as much of the load as he used to, but he still pulls his weight. The younger men that work here all treat him with respect, like for a father who raised them, or an older brother who paved the way for them.

This old man has power over every conversation. You are at once captivated by his magnetic eyes and distracted by the reflections in the lens that magnify them. He reveals the world around you within his quiet gaze as though he were the sage of Bangladesh, the father of your fathers, the window to your soul. But he is not. He is an old man by the side of the road who has power over every conversation.

This young man goes to Islamic school. Along with an academic education and studying Arabic, he is also learning to be a good Muslim, which means he’s learning to be a good person, respectful and forgiving; to be sincere and live with humility; and to always be truthful to others and to oneself.

On this day, after school, something was troubling him. It didn’t go away when we gathered for photographs or when we walked together through the village streets. Whatever it was he just couldn’t shake it. He seemed so disappointed, in something or someone, or maybe in himself. – Being a good Muslim can sometimes be a tall order for a young man. Especially for an honest, sincere, determined young man.

Mary is turning 81 this year, but she almost didn’t make it. Years ago she became gravely ill and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. In what she believed were her final days, but unwilling to let go, she prayed—with all her strength, day and night.

Mary not only survived to live a long and beautiful life, but she will tell you that her greatest comfort comes from what she now knows for certain: God loves her.

Walking along goat street in style in the small Ethiopian town of Asella, an agricultural hub nestled in the fertile Arsi Highlands just 200km south of the nation’s capital.

Over the past decade, many Ethiopians have been leaving their villages and small countryside towns for the nation’s growing capital, Addis Ababa. It’s become a modern-day city of wealth and prosperity in a land of otherwise persistent poverty. But for this man, the tradeoff is too great. He lives here, in the small town of Durame. It rests peacefully at the western edge of the Rift Valley where nothing much happens and the world doesn’t come to visit. There’s a small outdoor market and a single main street that heads out of town sooner than you expect. It’s the quiet life he’s grown to love and the home he’ll never let go.

Accra, Ghana’s capital, is home to over 20 different ethnic groups. Among them, the Ga are widely considered the original inhabitants of the city’s southern coast. Their small homes are built along narrow roads with shared courtyards that foster a close-knit, communal way of life. Over the decades, Accra’s coastal Ga neighbourhoods have grown ever smaller, squeezed between urban development pushing them tighter to the ocean and the saltwater’s steady erosion of the once expansive shoreline.

This is a photograph of family and friends taken on the last of the few remaining roads of their ancestral Ga community. The man on the left lives a few doors away, the grandmother and her two grandchildren live across the road, and the man in the centre lives in this small house just steps away from the shallow escarpment drop to the water’s edge. The ocean is behind them. The world ahead.

These two women own a small, outdoor restaurant in the Santa Cruz district of Manila city. Each day for lunch you can choose from five or six of their freshly made dishes to lay over a thick bed of white rice. It’s a home-cooked lunch that will fill your belly for less than a couple of dollars. Dinner is a dollar more, but there will be seafood.

Three large tables are set up on the sidewalk just outside the main floor apartment where these women live. The restaurant is essentially their family kitchen, and it’s where they eat their meals together with the people they serve. At the end of the day, and until everything gets put away and the kids to bed, this is where they spend all their time, working or not.

Throughout metro Manila there are hundreds of neighbourhoods just like this one, and at the heart of them all are people like these women and their families, saving a place for everyone. Their door is always open, and you are always welcome.

For these two sisters, beauty is an imperative. They adorn the world around them in every way they can — a flower garden by the side of the road; a henna tattoo on a tired hand; bright colour paint on dull tin walls. They think of beauty as acts of kindness, small gifts they leave in our path to trip us up and lift our spirits. Rays of light on a hidden truth. They believe that life is beautiful, or that it can be. All they want is for everyone to see it, and so they spread the word wherever they can. Not like religion, but like a prayer.