Sociality →
Sociality is a survival response to evolutionary pressures.
Photo essays find you rather than you finding them.
Read moreYou Only Photograph the Effect of the Wind →
Winds arrive, sometimes gently, sometimes with force, and then they pass.
What remains is never the wind itself, only what it touched.
Scripture tries to name this mystery:
And after the fire came a still small voice.
(1 Kings 19:11–12)
Sometimes a photograph works the same way.
It becomes a sacred record—not of the force itself, but of its aftermath.
You never see the wind.
You see the tree bent slightly off-center.
The water disturbed.
The moment changed.
The image is not the event.
It is the evidence
The Photo Is the Essay: Why Some Images Outlast Words →
On the morning of June 5, 1989, photographer Jeff Widener stood on a sixth-floor balcony of the Beijing Hotel, documenting the aftermath of the Chinese government’s violent crackdown in Tiananmen Square.
As a column of tanks moved along Chang’an Avenue, a lone man stepped into their path. Widener continued shooting, unsure whether he was witnessing an act of courage—or the man’s final moments. The tanks slowed. Then stopped.
The man climbed onto one of the vehicles, spoke briefly with the crew, and resumed his place in front of the column. Eventually, he was pulled away by bystanders. His identity and fate remain unknown.
Others photographed the scene, but Widener’s image was transmitted over the Associated Press wire and appeared on front pages around the world. In time, the photograph became known simply as Tank Man.
Decades later, the image endures not because we know who the man was, but because we don’t. His anonymity allows the photograph to speak beyond its moment—to stand for resistance, vulnerability, and the quiet force of a single human presence confronting power.
This is why photographs matter.
They do not explain.
They endure.