The Man Who Looks at the Ground

It is so beautiful to stay on the beach until the evening. The crowd scattered, the silence is cuddled by the sound of the waves, the heat warms up, does not burn anymore.

If then the clouds dance slowly a tango, without crying down their rainy tears on some human silhouettes, busy with chatting or enjoying the view of the sea, how could you resist taking a picture?

Yet I am not fascinated by all this, I mean, I am only partially. So I hesitate and wait, confident to have more time and a better chance for my shot, but the moment does not come.

Finally, in the centre of what looks like a painting, a man does something unexpected: he looks at the ground and for an almost endless time. It is the detail that takes my full attention, wakes me up and makes me take the picture, with conscious instinct.

The questions start soon after. Just a couple of them in the beginning, but they grow fast in number, as an obsession with the complicity of the imagination. What is the man looking at? Why? What is he thinking about? Did he lose something?

Maybe he saw a shell with the same shape as the one he gave to his first love, on that same shore, many years ago. Did he marry her? Or which way did their story end?. Perhaps he is just bowing in the presence of the sea, the last goodbye before going home. Does he do that every evening?

I cannot stop asking questions to myself, and taking pictures.