The children approached wanting to have their photograph taken

I was wandering aimlessly along the banks of the Ayeyarwady River when a small group approached me: a girl, a boy carrying a baby, and the baby itself. Three children in total, though the distinction feels almost unnecessary. They came straight toward me without the slightest hint of hesitation, drawn in as if by gravity. In this case, the force pulling them closer was the camera hanging from my neck. In Pyay, a provincial town in Myanmar, foreigners are uncommon enough, but a large black camera seems to be rarer still.

They clearly wanted their photograph taken. No one asked, yet the intention was unmistakable, which struck me as oddly fascinating. When I raised the camera, all three looked directly into the lens with disarming sincerity. The girl in the checkered shirt lifted her chest slightly and smiled with quiet pride. The shirtless boy seemed unsure whether he was supposed to smile; after a brief internal debate, his face settled into something shy and tentative. The baby, unaware that anything special was happening, stared back with a puzzled expression, its cap tilted awkwardly to one side.

It occurred to me then that being photographed is, in itself, a surprisingly abstract experience. The idea that one’s image can be captured and preserved on paper or a screen is not something easily grasped without a certain amount of age and accumulated experience. For the baby especially, this moment must have been nothing more than a curious pause in the flow of the afternoon, a stranger lifting a box to his face before life resumed its ordinary course along the riverbank.