Portraits Of Boston: 'We're Not Of This World'

“We’ve been dressing the same since we were kids.”

“Do you think alike?”

“Yes, we do.”

“Do you ever fight?”

“Sometimes we do, and we feel very bad afterwards. It’s not good to quarrel. We’re born-again Christians. Fighting, anger, envy—they’re all sins of the flesh. We don’t like this world. We don’t feel right in it. We’re not of this world. I guess we like clothes, but that’s not a sin. That’s the only thing we like. We only partake in what’s necessary. We don’t drink or dance or do anything that the world does, like get all drunk on New Year’s Eve. That’s all sin. There’s so much violence and vile things on TV. We always shut it off or change the channel. The only channels we watch now are 44 and 2.

It’s a terrible, terrible world and it will end very, very soon.”

“There are things we don’t understand. Sometimes we wonder why bad things never seem to happen to bad people; they happen only to good people.This is a horrible, ugly world.”

Portraits of Boston is a project of independent photographer Ivan Velinov. He is regularly sharing some of his favorite portraits with WBUR. Visit his website to see the hundreds of portraits he has taken on the streets of Boston.