To be invisible...

“I often wish I were invisible: I could see and not be seen. I wouldn’t have to reveal myself. I would record in a picture looks deep as the dark and connections entwining as crisscrossing railroad tracks. But then I wouldn’t be part of it and why would I care?”
--Sylvia Plachy, in Signs and Relics (1999).

Sylvia Plachy is a New York photojournalist. Her work is mostly (maybe entirely) film, slightly soft focus, often with gritty urban content, loaded with signs and portents. She is less concerned with sharpness and storytelling than with gesture and expression. I offer this street shot in admiration for what she does so much better than I. 

More from Signs and Relics:

“At the heart of every obsession is a howl. There is no great accomplishment without it. Who isn’t driven? What Nabokov said about art is true of stamp collecting, fans, and every other compulsion: ‘It’s a relief from the itch of being.’”

“Our need to belong leads to the celebration of synchronicity, even if its significance is indecipherable--like the deli clerk who said as he weighed my potato salad, ‘Half a pound on the nose. It’s my lucky day!’ ”

As we all go on with our daily lives, thousands of people in Nepal have been devastated by an earthquake. I send prayers and hopes for the suffering to be eased.