The Stare [Managua, Nicaragua]

Walking through a small market filled with happy, bustling, exuberant vendors, I was drawn to a darker corner, illuminated only by the stare of this man. Leaving the light behind, I adjusted my camera’s exposure accordingly, and slowly, sensitively strode up to him, motioning with hands that speak no spanish, asking if I could take his picture.

Stare. Eyes focused, yet perhaps not on this world. No response to my motioned question. Stare. I knelt before him, postured in submission in my act of capturing his stare, his spirit. I stole a momentary slice of it. He moved in no perceptable way, eyes unblinking. I stood. Stare. I turned the camera to show him his image. Stare.

I stepped gingerly out of the darkness of the stare, wading through a shadowed area while transitioning to the world of light, a world filled with moving faces, moving eyes, moving bodies. I glanced back. Stare.

Did this man see me? Is he blind? Did he feel feel the burst of the flash? Had life been reduced to a deadening, a dumbness, seeing eyes no longer seeing? Or, perhaps it was a case of, "Oh, just another gringo taking pictures? Why of me? What’s to look at?” Stare.