Hector, Jessica, and Pablo Sanchez playing cops and robbers at a HELP USA site, Bronx, New York 1993

Mary Ellen Mark took this photograph of Hector, Jessica, and Pablo Sanchez playing cops and robbers, somewhere in the Bronx. In a way, Mark is one of the robbers here too, seizing a stolen moment from these kids, freezing a split-second of their drama. You can see Jessica's confidence as she holds the gun, in charge of the game. The boys, Hector and Pablo, comply, but there's something in their posture, an ease, that suggests they're not really giving in. Maybe the game is more about being together than winning or losing. Mark's photograph is about so much more than just a game. It makes me think about how children act out the world around them, using play to explore and understand what they see. All the great photographers, like painters, find a way to make the fleeting feel permanent. They encourage us to consider a single image, and through it imagine a whole world.