Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography

This elderly woman is sitting in the entryway to the Kowloon City Market. Originally built in the 1930s and rebuilt in the 80s, it shares the same building design as the other seventy-odd government-run markets in the city: two floors of independent food vendors and an open concept third floor of cooked food stalls that serve everyday meals at affordable prices. It’s where this woman would have just had lunch as she probably does on the days she shops here, sharing a table with old friends who all do the same.

She’s in her eighties now. For her and elders like her, no matter where in the city they have lived, they’ve all been coming to food markets like this one. What were once uneventful daily errands have now become coveted opportunities for a feast of friends. Unbeknownst to the city’s youth, these markets will forever be the quintessential Hong Kong that just keeps getting better.

These city streets in the oldest neighbourhoods of Phnom Penh are tightly packed with four and five story walk-up apartment buildings. They’re decades old and crumbling but still home to a large population of the city’s less fortunate who are often excluded from the progress of life around them.

Though the buildings may be in decay, the communities they are home to have remained vibrant, hidden within a labyrinth of narrow and self-sufficient laneways that have kept their existence a secret and their lives safe from nowhere else to go.

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 young man lives in one of Manila’s most challenging neighbourhoods. Barangay 310. It’s a network of tightly packed buildings that surround the perimeter and along the outer walls of the unforgiving and desperately overcrowded Manila City Jail.

Entrance to the neighbourhood laneways are barely visible from the street. Once you’re inside they quickly lose any semblance of direction, leaving you to wander aimlessly through the damp maze of concrete. One wrong turn or lapse of judgment will crash you head first into the very deadest of ends.

This young man knows exactly where he is. He knows where he stands in this city and in his life, and he’s aware of at least a thousand things that have already stacked up against him. But today, at this particular moment, he is far more concerned for people like you wandering around in a place like this. He’s come to help. You must be lost. He knows the way.

In southern Bangladesh, just outside the town of Patuakhali, is a small, planned residential hamlet where Muslim and Hindi families live side-by-side in modest homes just like this one. There’s a small mosque and a Hindu temple along the main road, but the rest of the town and its community grounds are intended to bring the religions together, and without government intervention.

This community has been left alone to become what it’s residences make of it. Though as poor and sparse as other villages in the region, this one has become a model neighbourhood, and everyone works hard to keep it that way.

This man runs a small automotive repair shop in the eastern Turkish city of Gaziantep. The shop is attached to his home, connected to the living room where he sits now. A wood-burning stove anchors the room while bottles of motor oil seem as perfectly placed in the cluttered space as any ornament, teacup or propane tank.

As you might imagine, he’s the kind of person who is bothered by little and who feels at ease wherever he goes. It’s his general disposition in life. Important things come first. He’s more interested in art than politics, in his neighbours than his nation, in what he has than what he has not. The clutter in his life is not deliberate, it’s just the way things fall.

Today is the 23rd of March, the day Article 23 takes effect in Hong Kong. There is otherwise no explanation for why this discarded sofa has been placed here on this street, facing outward as clearly as it does. It will soon be carried away with the morning trash, but until then it is giving this man a window of opportunity he never thought to look for — a chance to take pause before a busy day and enjoy the comfort of breathing room he didn’t know he needed.

This is the first time in decades he’s looked out over the city from such a quiet place of peace, beyond nostalgia for its past and towards a genuine, plausible hope for its future. The morning’s outlook is clear and promising. Things are rarely as bad as they seem. Time is always on your side. He sits back, well aware that his vantage point has an hour at best before it’s hauled away. Just in case it never comes back he intends to cherish every second.

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 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.

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.

These two women live in the same 4-story walk-up in the Armenian city of Vanadzor. The buildings here and throughout the country are mostly Soviet-era construction with steep stairwells that make for tough climbs on hard, concrete steps. For these women it’s a climb they need to prepare for. Whenever they get home they will often sit here in the entryway, thirty minutes or so, waiting to get their legs back.

This woman and her husband live in Tbilisi, the Republic of Georgia’s capital. They’re part of a small Russian population who remained in Georgia after the fall of the Soviet Union, and in their elder years they still live in the same tiny house where they’ve lived most of their lives.

Were you to walk the streets of Tbilisi today you would see a nation on the rise: crumbling buildings are being restored; boutique hotels are welcoming new tourists; and government programs are encouraging the development of a new digital economy to entice younger generations to settle here and grow the country anew.

But for the elderly, like this lovely woman and her husband, little has changed over the past 35 years. Most have only a small pension to live on, and little government assistance to help them. They have become this growing nation’s new class of the aging poor.

This small neighbourhood in the big city of Antalya is a close-knit community of lower income families who’ve all come to know one another well. During the day the front door is left open, replaced by a curtain that’s more for shade than privacy. A few chairs are always kept outside as a standing invitation to stay a while. This may be far from the wealthiest place to live, but no one spends the day alone.

These young men have been put in charge of looking after the family goats. At least until tomorrow. They’ve been caring for them for three days as the city and nation prepare for Eid-ul-Azha, also known as the Festival of Sacrifice.

Tomorrow morning the entire Muslim world will sacrifice their cows, goats and sheep in celebration of Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his own son as a show of faith to Allah.

These animals will be slaughtered right where they stand. It will be bloody and brutal and difficult to witness. The meat will be carved up right on the street the very same day. One third of it will be for the family to keep, one third to share with friends, and one third will be distributed to the poorest people in the nearest neighbourhoods who can’t afford to buy meat for themselves. It will be an emotional day and these young men know it’s coming.

The small Azerbaijani city of Quba rests comfortably to the east of the Caucasus mountains, right where they begin to settle down into the quiet shoreline of the Caspian sea.

Within the city of Quba itself, and resting just as comfortably, this man is enjoying his own quiet moment of peace. Unwinding like the mountains around him. Taking everything in and nothing for granted.

On the highway into and out of the small town of Lin this man sells his fall harvest of onions, potatoes, and his home-made hot pickled peppers preserved in small, plastic water bottles. Throughout the day he waits down the road, relaxing in the grass and under the shade trees. But whenever someone begins to approach he quickly makes his way back to his market stand, buttons his jacket and stands up straight and proper behind his goods — the perfect gentleman waiting to greet you.

All the streets of Saigon are lined with trees. Not just in quiet laneways like this one, but along heavy traffic throughways — towering, majestic trees rise up from beneath heavy slabs of concrete otherwise thick enough to bury civilizations, including this one. Everybody knows it. Not a single person in this city takes any of them for granted. Not one person, and not one tree.