I started writing this column four years ago. This picture is from Minority Report #3, posted on March 21, 2010 — four years ago to the week. The first two columns I wrote were only text; this was the first Minority Report with a picture.
The photograph was actually taken some years before, while the Dumaguete docks were being reconstructed. There was no boat terminal at the time, so people had to wait in the open for their boats to arrive, surrounded by the rubble of the ongoing construction.
It was a dark day that looked like rain. I saw these people waiting, and they formed a pattern that seemed to crystallize the life I saw around me. Looking through the camera, I thought, “Now if only that woman would turn her head to the right…” Miraculously, she did, and I took the picture.
I wasn’t sure I had caught the moment I wanted, and waited fearfully for the proof sheet to be developed, and to my relief, I saw that it came out exactly as I had imagined, which rarely happens. When I decided to use pictures in my column, this is one I wanted to use first. I opened it by saying: “I don’t know who these people are. They’re just some people waiting for a boat. They stand there blank, expressionless, inert, not looking at each other, not looking at anything, silent little islands, lost inside themselves”.
I went on to write a little essay on the social structure of Dumaguete, and how I thought these people were individual examples of that, and what limitations this imposed on their lives and future.
I ended by saying: “At this moment, between one place and another, they are actors at intermission, out of character, ungrounded. Surrounded by strangers, they have no parts to play. If you don’t already know what their lives are like, don’t look into their faces for answers”.
That seemed true enough at the time. After all, I was a liberal American, raised to believe that all human beings were the same in thought and feeling, all accessible to each other. So, when I took this picture, I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the world around me.
But now, years later, I have come to realize that of what I saw, I understood much less than I thought. It’s still a great picture.
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Author’s email: john.stevenson299@gmail.com
