Strangers No More: Street Portraits Across Cultures-Yaprak Soysal at Plays and Players Theatre by Octavia McBride-Ahebee

I have been following the work of Yaprak Soysal for some time now, encountering her street portraits as they surface on my social media feed, quietly, without fanfare, yet insistently asking to be seen. Again and again, I find myself pausing. These photographs do not clamor for attention; they bear witness. They invite recognition.

While the portraits shared here were first encountered online and may not be the same works presented in this new exhibition, they nonetheless offer a window into Soysal’s way of seeing which is one that makes the exhibition especially anticipated. 

Strangers No More: Street Portraits Across Cultures-Photography by Yaprak Soysal will open tomorrow, Saturday, January 17, 2026, 4-6 p.m., at Plays and Players Theater, 1714 Delancey Street. 

Soysal’s portraits present something essential about who we are as a city. They remind us that the soul of a city resides in its people. The ethnic and cultural diversity so often discussed in abstract terms comes into focus here as intimate, grounded, and dignified. Each face carries a story, but Soysal resists the urge to over-narrate. Instead, she allows presence to speak.

What strikes me most is her refusal to exoticize difference. These are not images that turn cultural markers into spectacle. Rather, each subject meets the camera with agency and calm authority. The photographs suggest a moment of mutual recognition; an exchange rather than an extraction. Even when I encounter these images digitally, I sense conversation behind them: a pause, an agreement, a shared curiosity.

Street portraiture can be fraught. It carries questions of power, consent, and representation. Yet Soysal’s work consistently conveys care. The viewer is not positioned above or outside the subject, but alongside them. The portraits feel collaborative, as if shaped by trust in the brief space where two strangers meet and decide, together, to make an image.

As someone who has lived, worked, and written within multicultural communities, I am especially attuned to how easily difference can be flattened or

 misunderstood. Soysal’s portraits resist that flattening. They insist on complexity without drama, on individuality without isolation. Each photograph feels like a small act of civic faith.

In sharing some of these portraits here which are images I have encountered previously through Soysal's Facebook posts, I want to honor the way her work has already been moving through the world, touching viewers one at a time. Strangers No More is not only a title; it is a proposition. It asks us to slow down, to look carefully, and to reconsider how we see those we pass every day.

I know Soysal not only through her work but personally, and she photographed me during a project we were  both a part of.  That experience deepened my respect for her practice and resulted in one of my most cherished photographs.

Her photographs are worth seeing in person. 

Strangers No More: Street Portraits Across Cultures-Photography by Yaprak Soysal will open tomorrow, Saturday, January 17, 2026, 4-6 p.m., at Plays and Players Theater, 1714 Delancey Street.