The mass of humanity just boggles the mind sometimes. Everyone is going somewhere, everyone has been somewhere. Thousands upon thousands of destinations, some that I have shared, some that I will never experience. What a treasure of experience and information that lies inside the mind of each and every person that you pass on the street.
The smelly man who keeps bumping me as we stand like sardines in the bus could be thinking about his childhood in countryside Russia, winters which saw temperatures colder than I will ever experience or even imagine, and a poverty that I probably wouldn’t want to imagine. The lady in line infront of me at the bottle shop might still remember the day that man landed on the moon, the guy who served me my bagel could have been abused as a child, and the stranger I walk by on the street may walk by my brother in 1,5,10 or 50 years time in Australia or maybe some other continent, and neither of them will appreciate the coincidence.
This is why I have decided that I need to learn how to take pictures of people. Suddenly I see the appeal so much more. It doesn’t have to be a shot of your mates, or even someone you know. How cool is it to be able to capture an image of a life that you will never know and to be conected to experiences you can’t imagine. I may never know where my subjects are going or where they have been, but they are destined to be remembered in a small way, and maybe only for a small time in the archives of my photos & maybe the archives of my mind, and that will do me just fine.
Now to be completely random, here is a picture of the top of a salt cellar.
Tim Goldsmith 