Man in front of café, Paris 1951

Robert Frank captured this scene, *Man in front of café, Paris*, with his camera. I’m immediately drawn to the man’s raised hand, a gesture that feels both like a greeting and a kind of stopping, as if to say, "Wait, look at me, look at us." Frank, I imagine, was right there, in the thick of it, feeling the pulse of the city. Maybe he saw something of himself in this man, a fellow traveler navigating the world with all its complexities. The gritty texture of the photograph, the way the light catches the edges of things, it's all so raw and real. It reminds me of some of the black and white photography by Daido Moriyama, both artists capturing fleeting moments of daily life with an unvarnished eye. Each image is a question, an invitation to pause and consider what it means to be human, to be present, and to keep looking.