"Little Boxer"

From 2009 to 2019, I stepped into several boxing clubs in Albania—bare rooms with peeling walls, the air thick with sweat, and young bodies in motion. I wasn’t there just for the sport. I was searching for the faces behind the fists, the stories behind the training.

I titled the series Little Boxer because many of the boys were barely twelve or thirteen. Still children, and yet already caught in a fight for survival. Their eyes struck me—serious, alert, sometimes defiant, sometimes already tired of life.

I didn’t photograph them in action, but in moments of pause. In those brief seconds when they were breathing, thinking, maybe dreaming. Their bodies spoke of discipline and hardship; their eyes revealed something deeper—poverty, ambition, anger, and a quiet hope for something more.

With Little Boxer, I wanted to show what often goes unseen: the dignity of these young men, their inner strength—and the fragility that lies just beneath the surface.