If I Were Famous
There is a kind of prestige that is unfairly distributed among the things that deserve to be seen. Some receive a frame, a white wall, and silence. Others are left on the ground.
Of everything I photographed in Maragogipinho, this was the one I most enjoyed making. On my way to a pottery workshop, I came across two black sneakers, a single sock, stone, water, and moss. Nothing was moved or arranged. The photograph already existed. My job was to notice it.
Perhaps that is why I love street photography so much, that curiosity about life and its traces. I look up, down, and all around. I look for reflections, shadows, details. Looking only at the ground is a waste: half the miracles can happen above our heads. This time, there was one waiting on the ground.
The composition offers two paths, almost two images in one. If the eye enters through the upper sneaker, it follows the diagonal of the pair toward the single sock, pale and cut off by the edge, leading out of the frame. If it starts with the sock, the path reverses: we enter through what is almost escaping, pass through the lower sneaker, and arrive at the upper one. Along the way, the green, wet moss meets the mineral stone; the water alters the light across the wet ground, while the black preserves shine, wear, texture, and depth.
Stories emerge from what we see. Why are the laces tied? Why two sneakers and only one sock? A drunken night? A fight? Did someone go swimming in the river? Did they get tired of them? Was the wearer someone’s lover who, after being discovered, ran away without even having time to put them on?
I don’t know. And thank goodness. Whatever happened before remained outside the frame, like part of the sock. In that absence, we tell several stories in our heads.
If I were famous, perhaps people would say that something so simple to execute, something that depended only on paying attention for it to exist, deserved the cover of a major book or to be the central image of an exhibition. They would call me a genius.
But who said that isn’t what will happen?
A good image doesn’t need to be explained. My texts are born from what I felt, but this time I needed to talk about the satisfaction and pride of recognizing what was right in front of me. I love what I made: I recognize in it what I love most about making photographs.
