Photo in the plaza

On a hot Colombian day in June of 1991, Adriana and I took a bus from Bogotá to Neiva. As we cooled down under a huge magnolia tree in Parque Santander with a snow cone, an old wrinkled man came to us. He quietly sat down next to us and asked us if he could take our picture. We smiled at each other.

He walked back to his camera and put his head under the black cloth while telling us about the weather and the church and a hundred other unimportant things. Adriana and I smiled as he lifted the old yellowing piece of cardboard off the hole in the front of the black square box.

Nothing happened. No sound, no image, no flash—nothing more than polite conversation about a few bugs he had seen and the traffic in the plaza.

A few minutes later he handed us this picture that I carry in my wallet to remind me of the early days of long hair and bus trips to unexpected places. Just because.

Well, maybe things haven't changed that much after 25 years.