Gallery
Istanbul 2025
Efe Yalçın offers a welcoming presence in his restaurant, FISH Istanbul, in the city’s ancient port neighborhood of Karakoy. Two of us walked in off the street into a tiny first floor, half of which was the kitchen manned by Efe’s chef, Serkan. Stay or leave? we asked one another with a glance. Efe, possessing a magnetism twice the size of his place, gave us little choice. He directed us up a narrow, winding staircase to a second floor where five empty tables awaited. It was 5 p.m., early for dinner, explaining the lack of customers. Lucky us. In order, Efe served us two cold, local beers; a main dish of Norwegian sea bass, roasted peppers and sautéed onions; a Turkish salad of local tomatoes, sweet onions and herbs; and french-fried potatoes with spicy ketchup and mayonnaise dips. We ate it all, savoring every bite. The following afternoon we revisited Efe, just to say hello. He greeted us as if we were long-time friends. We learned he once was a star soccer player in the Turkish Super League, that he has a 22-year-old daughter, that he had only been open two months and, with no kitchen experience, he had quickly learned how to debone a fish. When we said goodbye there were hugs all around. Efe, 52, told us we always had a home there. The experience reminded me of the difference between tourists and travelers. Tourists generally follow a pre-determined, guided path crowded with other tourists. Travelers seek unknown, uncluttered roads, knock on mysterious doors and sometimes are rewarded with the gift of meeting a Efe Yalçın, gaining a friend and a precious memory for life.
Estonia 2024
Filmmaker and journalist Jaan Tootsen revisits the Tallinn neighborhood featured in his documentary, “New World.” The building behind served as the center for a group of idealistic, counterculture millennials intent on turning a section of this neighborhood, Uus Maailm, into a pedestrian-only community of coffee houses, art galleries, parks, retail shops, music and sports venues. Tootsen chronicled their controversial quest over a five-year period, ending in 2011. The effort failed. But the concept inspired others, resulting in successful community-based neighborhoods elsewhere in Estonia’s capital and other cities. The community house, which was in disrepair during filming, has been renovated. It’s now a restaurant where I met Tootsen for coffee after an on-line introduction the previous day. Visibly, there’s little else left from the “New Age” days, adding to the melancholy Tootsen felt upon his return to Uus Maailim. Aside from documentaries, Tootsen, 48, has since 1999 produced “Night University,” a popular public radio program featuring expert lecturers on varied topics – an Estonian precursor to TED Talks. He’s presently completing a film on the colorful and unconventional life of former Estonian President Toomas Hendrick Ilves.
Finland 2024
Chef Pedro Mata takes a break at Du Dii, a popular Thai takeout joint in Kallio, a blue-collar neighborhood in northeast Helsinki. A native of Valencia, Spain, he moved here four decades ago with his Finnish wife. She died young and Pedro married a woman from Thailand. Having worked as a waiter and cook in several of Helsinki’s finest restaurants, Pedro opened Du Dii in 2001 after being schooled in the cuisine by his wife. The restaurant was a success, the marriage was not. His third union, to a Vietnamese woman, has lasted 17 years. One reason it has worked, he says, is she speaks little Finnish and he doesn’t know Vietnamese. “We can’t talk, so we don’t argue.” At 74, Pedro lives with the youngest of his three sons from his first marriage and four of his nine grandchildren. His near future does not include retirement: “As long as my health is good maybe I’ll work until I’m 80,” he says.
Lebanon 2023
Rev. Fr. Issa Francis of the Monastery of the Nativity and his fellow monks built this simple chapel using, in part, trees from the surrounding forests. The monastery, located in the northeast mountain village of Laqlouq, is affiliated with the Melkite Greek Catholic Church. The faith is unique in that its liturgy follows the ancient Byzantine rite practiced by its sister Greek and eastern Orthodox churches yet is aligned with the Catholic church with fidelity to the pope. The Melkites origins date to Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians. A leadership feud in 1774 caused the Melkites to split from their Orthodox brothers. Five years later, Pope Benedict XIII welcomed them into the Catholic church. Today there are around 1.5 million Melkites, the majority of them residing in the Middle East.
Ghana 2022
Peddlers and shoppers converge on the capital city’s central market on a typical Saturday morning. Walking through Accra’s Makola Market, which opened in 1924, is like a journey through a magic kingdom of retail. If you wish, you could stock your kitchen, furnish your home and fill your closet with a seemingly infinite array of products and food. The sellers mostly are women. Large umbrellas keep the hot sun off those manning kiosks. Wealthier merchants operate stores opposite the kiosks, leaving space on the sidewalks and streets for the buyers who often jostle for space. Vehicles trying to navigate their way through often get stuck; there’s simply no place to go. Aside from the market’s central strip, there’s an endless web of side streets equally flush with goods for sale. If you’re a local, you’ll know how to get the best price. Visitors, not so much.
Albania 2021
Brothers await test results at a medical lab in Tirana. I was on my way to the airport for my journey home but had to have proof of a negative COVID test as I would otherwise be unable to board my plane. I could have been tested at the airport but that would have been risky as there was no way to know how long it might take if it was crowded. [As it turned out, the airport was packed.] Through a friend, I found a lab that could give me a result in 15 minutes. Cost: $30. While waiting – a nerve-racking experience as a positive test would have kept me quarantined in Albania another 14 days – I fortunately was distracted by this photo opportunity. And, yes, the test turned out in my favor.
Toledo 2024
Aniese Seed [L], 99, and Bob Storer, 100, spend an afternoon reminiscing about their years together as best friends and business partners. They first met 93 years ago at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in downtown Toledo. Over the years they double-dated, lived on the same street and, in 1976, formed a partnership in Toledo Transducers, Inc. Bob, a successful civil engineer, fronted the cash and had a knack for sales. Aniese’s acumen as a mechanical engineer and his meticulous attention to detail proved invaluable overseeing the plant’s machinery. So sharp are these old timers, they have no problem explaining the world of transducers to those who are clueless. [It’s an electronic device that converts energy from one form to another.] Both men agree their success as friends and in business has been rooted in their Christian faith. Bob, amazingly on the mend from surgery for a broken femur, says of his friend: “I could always count on Aniese.” Aniese’s take on Bob, who turns 101 March 13: “He always told me the truth.”
Chicago 2024
At 15 months, Isla is discovering the world beyond her home. This day, at the Chicago Children’s Museum, she is joined by hundreds of her peer group doing what kids do best: Play. Strangers to one another, they briefly interact before moving on to the next adventure. Their varied ethnicity is a snapshot of the world we live in. Isla and her playmates know nothing of prejudices. For now, they are equal. And they are united in a fleeting age of innocence.
Brazil 2023
A trio of youths make their way along a new road in a horse-drawn wagon, a typical mode of transportation in this remote, sparsely settled region in northeastern Brazil. The road, known as PI-309, was completed in 2018 to reduce the driving time from Teresina, the capital of Piaui state, to the Atlantic coast and its stunning beaches. Vast stretches of desert-like scrub dominate the terrain. Small settlements of simple brick homes are scattered along the way amid sparse forests. They provide little relief from the oppressive, year-round heat. To subsist, the locals raise chickens and goats housed in rudimentary built pens adjacent to their homes. Some tend to small fields of corn and soybeans. Motorbikes are parked in front of most homes – but no cars – as the two-wheelers are the fastest way to reach the area’s few villages, where they can buy supplies and, occasionally, find work.
Ghana 2022
In Jamestown, a coastal shanty enclave in south Accra – Ghana’s capital – children are raised in stone caves and wooden shacks. Many of the families are squatters whom the government has tried to evict time and again, without success. The women roam better neighborhoods selling fish, bread, produce, water and soft drinks. The men fish. Or attempt to find work as day laborers. As for the children, education is their best hope for a future away from here. But the schools are underfunded and mostly ignored. Kids not much older than this boy often are forced into the streets as peddlers, like their mothers, to help contribute. They grow up illiterate. For thousands of Ghanaians who call Jamestown home, each day is like the one before, and every year is the same as the previous one. Their quest is simple: Survive.
Ghana 2022
A young girl seeks shade under one of the few trees standing in the common in Wute, a dying village in southeast Ghana. The girl, Akos, is the 9-year-old granddaughter of the village chieftain, Kudzo. An uncertain future awaits. Once a thriving community, Wute has lost many of its families to the capital, Accra, 90 miles west of here. Farming used to comfortably sustain Wute’s residents from one generation to the next. But government support, always a given, has mostly disappeared. The weather has changed as well, making the timing and length of the crucial rainy season unpredictable, diminishing crop yields. Most significantly, farming no longer appeals to the majority of Wute’s young men, so they’ve left for Accra in search of more promising – and less arduous – careers. Many are ill-prepared for city life or have the skill set for anything other than menial work, leaving them trapped between two vastly different worlds.
[Editor’s note: Click on photo for full frame]
Albania 2021
The incomplete Great Mosque of Tirana rises above the capital in the city center. When the country’s Communist leader Enver Hoxha famously declared Albania the world’s first atheist nation in 1967, many of the country’s mosques and Christian churches were destroyed, abandoned or converted into community centers and museums. After the Communists were ousted in 1990 the remaining mosques and churches re-opened. On land donated by the government, first the Catholics [around 10% of the population] and then Christian Orthodox [around 6%] built massive cathedrals in central Tirana. The mosque project was more complicated due to the controversial decision by Albania’s government to allow Turkey to fund the construction and its $34 million cost. With around 60% of the country Muslim, the result of 400 years of Ottoman rule, the majority sentiment among them was that it was unacceptable to allow their former oppressors to build the country’s central mosque. The building, which will hold 5,000 worshipers, is expected to be completed this year.