Almost every time I visit other towns I choose one day to get up really early in the morning to experience that particular town waking up.

Last week I was in Barcelona for work and I decided to try to portrait two areas that felt extra important in these hard economic times for Spain; people that we might not see otherwise during our hectic days, those that live their lives in the dark and have nowhere to go. The other topic was to show the town getting ready for a new day.

The first photo is from the first category. This is a woman I came about while walking over Plaça de Catalunya, and I really felt for her. A woman, without almost anything besides her stroller; but still she quietly stood there and shared her bread with the birds.

The moment really did have a mix of emotions. Sadness for her situation, compassion for her willing to give but also calmness since she, a few moments after this pic was taken carefully smiled at me and then continued to feed the birds. But most of all she made think of how she ended up there.

I couldn’t imagine how it must be, to have a life like that, and moments like this always brings perspective of the differences in the world. I’m really thankful of how Sweden have tackled this recession that has hit southern Europe so badly (even though there are things that also can and must be improved in Sweden as well).

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.
– Marian Wright Edelman