Portraits of immigrant and American workers in the one of the oldest global industries from the oldest restaurants & cafes around the San Francisco; prepandemic and some survived postpandemic.

One day in March of 2014 I saw on TV local news of a man named Joe who was retiring. The story intrigued me and the light went on in my head, thinking of my father and the working friends and some hardships that went along with the food service industry. I learned how long Joe was in the food business and how San Francisco was saying goodbye to a food institution of long standing service. I was compelled to capture this event and many others as historic, socioeconomics, families and friendships. Hence, my 10+ year project, “The Heart of San Francisco’s Oldest Restaurants”; and now of the World.

Thus, my “Oldest Restaurants Globally” is worth continuing as it shows the human experience of camaraderie of people gathering to meet, share meals and exchange stories that all gets passed on to more generations who will pass the baton of meaningful help to each other when times are good and bad.

I’ve photographed the cornerstone restaurant industry—often the heartbeat of local, regional, national, and global economies, a living thermometer of livelihoods. I create cinematic images for a reason, my spirit and soul have been given the gift of seeing and discovering isolation in myself, other persons in themselves, in groups and I see isolation in still life subjects. I use silhouettes to express emotional distance in my portraits, while backlit painted glass in still life evokes a quiet, spectral presence. Yet from solitude, I often uncover the seeds of connection and service. Immigration can carry the weight of alienation—an echo of absence and a longing for belonging. I lean into finding a place that allows me to create an abstract image in our world when capturing images.

My photographic work explores the tension between permanence and impermanence—how memory, material, and gesture collide in moments of transformation. I’m interested in how images can both document and distort, serving as fragile archives of emotion where language often fails.

Each photograph begins with a question: what remains when context is stripped away? I work with analog and digital processes, often incorporating found imagery, layered textures, and spatial interventions to challenge the viewer’s assumptions about time, place, and narrative. I’m drawn to subjects that resist easy interpretation—abandoned spaces, obscured faces, transitional light—because they invite a slower kind of looking.

This practice is rooted in a desire to decelerate perception. In a culture of speed and saturation, I aim to create images that ask for pause, for reconsideration. Whether through scale, silence, or visual disruption, I want the viewer to feel slightly unmoored—invited to reorient themselves.

Ultimately, my work is less about answers than about framing uncertainty. It’s an ongoing attempt to hold complexity without resolution, using photography not as a mirror but as a threshold.