These photographs depend on encounter. As Dr. Tayfun Belgin observes, Kiblitsky approached people “not in Spanish, not in English or Russian, but through non-verbal eye contact.” The force of the portraits lies in that compressed relation: direct, respectful, and alert to the individuality of the person before the camera.

The result is a body of work in which people are shown neither as emblems nor as anonymous social types. They remain specific, self-possessed, and irreducible, whether photographed at work, at leisure, in bars, in shops, or in the street.