A photograph is both a fact and a story.

It is a fact that I saw that child on that day; his pants were ragged and dirty,

his feet were calloused, his face was lined. I had seen the world in which

he lived and that one moment made a summary and a symbol to me.

I clicked the shutter. When the photograph was developed and printed and

you looked at it, it became a story. It was the details in the picture that

made it into a story for you: you could see his poverty in his torn clothes,

you knew that his feet had never known shoes, you recognized worry and

the strain of hunger in those lines on his young face. Your feelings are

part of the photograph. We recognize suffering and we do not lose hope,

we see clearly a universal human spirit and we believe that spirit will

overcome all the facts of our lives. That, too, is part of the story of these

photographs. Where will this story go next? Each viewer will bring a new

facet to the image, for it lives between my eyes and the eyes of every viewer.

The life the photograph continues, long after that child has walked back into his life.