Beneath the noise of the city, I walked the center of Valencia and felt as if time had deliberately stopped at its most merciless hour. Poverty here is not hidden in alleyways or tucked behind closed doors, it is sprawled openly on the sidewalks, confronting anyone willing to look. A man sleeping on the ground clutches his dog as if it were his last thread to dignity. His sneakers are torn, his body is folded into the concrete, and still, some would call this scene “moving” or “poetic.” But I cannot, and I will not. There is nothing noble in being forced to sleep on a street, nothing “inspiring” about sharing scraps of warmth with a stray animal. To portray this as resilience is to betray the truth. Poverty is not art. It is a wound, untreated and reopened each day.
Crossing through these streets is like walking through a time machine, except instead of nostalgia it delivers a sharp reminder of how little has changed in decades. The rain falls, and a man with an umbrella pushes a cart filled with plastic containers, his hands stiff, his clothes soaked. There is no romance here, no beauty in sacrifice, only survival. He is not a symbol of strength but of how people bend and break under weight they never asked to carry. Around him buses screech, vendors shout, graffiti shouts rebellion, and still the faces of those around me are distant, weary, almost resigned. The city breathes exhaustion, and I breathe it with them. I refuse to pretend that this is normal. I refuse to let my eyes adjust to decay as if it were scenery.
During these walks I keep asking myself questions that hover without answers. How many years can a society recycle the same struggles and still expect its people to endure? Why do we accept as background noise what should set alarms ringing inside our hearts? I do not speak names, I do not point fingers, because the guilty are too many and the cycle of blame too tired. But deep down I know the cruelty is deliberate, because there is enough wealth in this world to ensure no one sleeps on a sidewalk, no one pushes a cart under the rain, no one hides hunger behind a forced smile. And yet, every step reminds me we have made a collective choice to spoil everything that could offer dignity.
Every time I walk here, I also see my own reflection. I think of the small cruces I carry, the debts, the obligations, the endless struggle to keep balance in a life that feels increasingly fragile. But when I compare my own weight to the ones I witness in these streets, my complaints feel hollow. I return home to a roof, a bed, and the illusion of stability, while others remain out there negotiating with concrete floors, hunger, and indifference. These walks force me to confront the uncomfortable truth that poverty is not an abstraction for me to observe, it is a mirror of what could happen to anyone when the line between surviving and falling disappears. And perhaps that is why it unsettles me so deeply: it strips away the illusion that we are safe from it.
Sometimes I think about the world we could have built, the one where dignity is not a privilege but a foundation. We are capable of feeding everyone, of sheltering everyone, of letting people walk without fear or humiliation. Yet what I see around me is evidence of how little we want to face ourselves. We choose to glorify struggle instead of eliminating it, to romanticize poverty instead of eradicating it. These photographs I took are not trophies or testimonies of strength, they are fragments of a reality too heavy to ignore. My words are not decoration but resistance, a refusal to soften what should stay raw. Poverty is not cool. It is not noble. It is not a lesson. It is simply the cruel evidence of how far we have let humanity fall.
All photographs and content used in this post are my own. Therefore, they have been used under my permission and are my property.
Your words sound poetic and I felt everything deeply.
But to be realistic, why do these people comfortably sleep by the roadside? Most of them aren’t disabled so why do they prefer to sleep away their day instead of getting their hands to work? Poverty isn’t art but some use it to glorify their laziness. I know our world is depreciating but until people make a conscious decision to not succumb to poverty, they will remain poor and will end up folded on the concrete like the guy in the photo above.
Jobs won’t just come to some of us while sitting at home. Sometimes we are own problem yet blame it on the government.
Btw, I enjoyed reading this.
Well, you and I agree about a few things. I don't know the whole story about any person on this shots. My intention is go deeply. We are poor because many politicians have decided that why with their corruption all over, everything and because some of us succumb to vices, true bad decisions in life and non empathy from society... I see this everyday. Sometimes I can keep my rhythm running and like this time. I just can't... I'm a human being, a professional, a whole time worker. But... If tomorrow someone decides to kick me out, I'd be closer to them than probably you... It's complicated indeed. And I appreciate your thoughts on this
Very thoughtful, poor people in my city live the easiest life. Dozens of NGOs provide free food in the name of religion (food with the best items probably the working class wouldn't afford frequently). They can sleep wherever they want. And people from across the country travel to Karachi to seek that luxury. The city is full of them 🥹
There’s a huge difference between poverty in developed economies and country like (probably) yours,and mine when most people are (literally) fighting to exist (and let's behind all kind of normal things like going out to dinner and party) every single day... We should be like Norway but we're far, far, far away from our own past and memoirs as a society... Thank you all for stopping by, I mean it. 🩷
Poverty in big cities can be hidden in plain sight. This reflection is a reminder of that and regardless where we are, it's pretty similar. It's fascinating that there are glorification of poverty, think about how sometimes minimalism can be in a fine line of glorifying poverty as in framing it as a choice rather than actual systemic inequality. But to those people poverty is real, it's their daily struggle and sometimes can feel like inescapable situation.
You know, dear @macchiata? We love to watch into the other sidewalk. That itself explains why, as a society, we do not demand more actions to fight this kind of inhumane lack of empathy to other human being, for God's sakes... Thank you for mentioning the minimaliatic part of the romantization, friend... Couldn't say any better than you did.