Soup Kitchen
Soup Kitchen is a series of black-and-white photographs captured with a Canon EF camera and a 50mm lens, a classic tool that allowed me to approach my subjects with intimacy and precision. Over several weeks, I visited the Biyton Beach soup kitchen regularly, a remote, almost forgotten place where humanity revealed itself in its rawest and most sincere form.
The space was frequented by working immigrants and struggling American families for whom coming to the soup kitchen was not a choice, but a necessity. I focused primarily on portraits—moments suspended in time where each expression tells a story, where each gaze carries the weight of daily struggle, fleeting hope, exhaustion, and, sometimes, the quiet dignity found in sharing a meal.
The use of black-and-white photography, stripped of chromatic distraction, brings textures, lines, wrinkles, and above all, the depth of emotion into focus. Faces become intimate landscapes, revealing the silent richness of lives too often overlooked.
Soup Kitchen is more than a documentary record: it is an invitation to witness, a silent dialogue with people society tends to ignore. Each portrait attempts to capture the fragile beauty of human resilience and the dignity of those living on the margins—people who, despite hardship, continue to smile, to hope, and to persevere.