Common Ground

I didn’t set out to make this series.

For more than ten years, often without intention, I have photographed people playing games in public spaces while traveling around the world. Only after returning from different journeys and looking back through my photographs did I begin to notice the similarities: people gathering around tables, playing cards or dominoes, watching a game, talking, laughing, arguing and simply spending time together.

The places were often thousands of miles apart, yet the scenes felt remarkably familiar.

What struck me most was that this commonality often existed between people whose countries or communities were deeply divided by politics, history or conflict. In Israel and Iran, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and elsewhere, I found people engaging in remarkably similar everyday rituals despite the differences that separate them.

The games themselves change. The surroundings change. The people change.

But the impulse to gather, to play, to compete, to talk and to spend time together is remarkably universal.

Common Ground is an ongoing collection of these moments—an observation of the ordinary connections that exist beneath the borders and divisions that so often define how we see the world.