I arrived in Havana the day after Fidel Castro died, with a camera, a suitcase and no idea what kind of country I was about to walk into. What I found was a city in mourning, a nation in transition, and people who still opened their doors to a stranger with a camera.

I learned to bake on my mother’s kitchen counter, went all the way to a pastry diploma and my own dessert business, and somehow ended up behind a camera. This is the story of how caramel, salty-sweet desserts and a failed cake on the floor turned into Nushinka and my love of food photography.

As a child I rolled my eyes at my grandmother’s stories of “the good life in Warsaw” and my mother swore her feet would never touch Polish soil. Years later I went anyway, with only my camera for protection, and found both the traces of my family in cemeteries, ghettos and camps – and a modern, vibrant Poland.

A giant tortoise once chased me on a tiny island off Zanzibar. Years later I went back with my three sons… and found it again!

I arrived in Jaffa to the kind of morning that makes you believe in the sea again - flat water, soft light, boats rocking lazily in their slips. The harbor looked wide awake: engines humming, ropes creaking, a white seagull posing proudly on a metal frame as if it owned the place.

Following the smell of salt and diesel, I wandered toward the fish market, expecting the usual chaos - calls over the noise, knives flashing, slippery floors. Instead, I was met by silence.

Once a year my city fills with blood, bruises and broken bones – and everyone is smiling.
At the Zombie Parade, fear is something you dress up in, not something that controls you. With my camera I walk between growling monsters, kind eyes behind dead-looking contact lenses, and tiny moments where the mask slips – a zombie checking WhatsApp, a clown tying a child’s shoe. It’s messy, funny, a little disturbing, and a perfect reminder that sometimes the safest place to face our fears is right out in the open, under the streetlights.

When I arrived at the Jaffa flea market, I expected crates of fresh goods, haggling vendors, the smell of home-cooked food and maybe a few tourists taking photos. Like every colorful market I knew, I imagined a lively, cheerful experience.

Instead, I walked into chaos.

As a kid in Europe I sulked through endless cathedrals and museums. Years later, in snowy Berlin, I built my own version of the city with street art, currywurst and memorials — and then watched my son fall in love with my parents’ “classic” Berlin. Three generations, three Berlins, one surprising full-circle story.

I walked into Bascula expecting glitter and applause - and found a dark, silent hall where circus artists train with nothing but light, shadows and sheer determination. Photographing them in that in-between world, with no audience and no costumes, changed the way I see both circus and photography.

Women’s hands hold entire worlds – they hug, heal, create and raise, across three generations in my family. From my mother’s knitting needles to my sister’s coffee cup and my niece’s sticky watermelon fingers, these quiet moments show how much love can live in a pair of hands.