I walked into a courtyard in Old Dhaka, working with GMB Akash and Lynn Fraser, looking for nothing in particular, and found a man standing completely still, with a strip of sunlight lying straight across his eyes.
The scene stopped me. It looked like he was wearing a mask of light. I raised the X100V, my trusty travelling companion, and made the picture before I'd really thought about it, certain he was about to move, only he didn't. He was just standing there, and it occurred to me that he wasn't posing or waiting for someone. He was feeling the sun.
The reality is that he's been blind since 2011. Cataracts, caused by pressure on the eyes, treatable, in the right circumstances, with the right access. But the healthcare system hadn't reached him, and so the light that was painting such a beautiful line across his face was also the only way he had left of experiencing it.
I've made pictures I'm technically prouder of. But what started as a composition became something else entirely once I understood what I was actually looking at.
#streetportrait #documentaryphotography #humanstories
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