Montreal, Solitary Man
“The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous.”
— Arthur Miller
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That there is life at all on planet earth is somewhat miraculous. A ridiculous number of circumstances had to be just right - the location of the solar system in the galaxy, the distance of the earth from the sun, the size of the moon, the power of the Van Allen belt, the composition of the atmosphere, the Planck constant – the list goes on and on. Intelligent life is even more improbable, perhaps why we see it so rarely.
That I was able to obtain this image, also required a constellation of fortunate circumstances.
• I was up early since we were checking out of our hotel in Montreal.
• It was a Sunday.
• It was drizzling.
• The sky was cloudy, so the light was subdued and even.
• The streets were devoid of people and cars.
• The subject could not be missed since he was the only one on the empty sidewalk.
• I was able to speed up to intercept him.
• He crossed onto the street at just the right moment.
• He paused at just the right location and looked left.
• My camera was ready, I was able to crouch, compose and press the shutter before he moved.
Voila!
The moment I took this picture, I felt in my body that everything had just come together for the ideal shot. Was this how Henri Cartier-Bresson felt? Perhaps street photography should be considered a sport. It is a whole-body phenomenon involving much more than the application of a finger to a shutter.
Later, I would discover that Henri Cartier-Bresson had taken a very similar photo titled Allee du Prado, Marseilles in 1932. In it, a solitary man, in a coat, on a wet day, paused in the center of a walkway lined with trees, looked to his left and was photographed.