I thought that I had already made my last shot on this trip as our taxi crawled through Beijing's rush hour traffic on our final evening in China. I was wrong. We were stalled opposite a bus, and we saw in its window this conversation taking place between a young child and an older man, perhaps his grandfather. I can imagine the conversation – the little boy has asked a question about something he has just seen from this window, and the older man responds with thought, care, and love. The child listens – he is awestruck by what he hears. He may long remember this moment. It is a story based on the interplay of body language and expressions. I hope it brings back memories of similar conversations my viewers had with their elders when they were this child’s age. I know it does for me.
(My friend Tim May, shooting along side of me, made an image of this scene an instant later. It offers a
vivid and very amusing contrast to this image. See: http://www.pbase.com/mityam/image/93926500 )