There was something — a glance, a presence — that made me stop. We didn’t need the same language. Emotion filled the space where words couldn’t. A silent kind of permission passed between us.

These portraits aren’t planned or posed. They’re instinctive. Framed in moments where the world briefly slowed, and someone I’d never met allowed me to see them, just as they were.

We moved on. But I carried something from each one. And maybe, in some small way, they did too.