Quiet moments. I interrupt them with a soft click of a shutter.
In places like this, the power transformers hum incessantly while the impossibly quiet crackle of a heavy draw on a cigarette is the only other sound… but nevertheless drowned out.
I sometimes wish I could interrupt other moments in even quieter places. I wish the click of the shutter was completely ignored. Or better yet, accepted. As if a single “Press Pass of the World” could be handed out only to those who promise to use it for good… above all, do no harm.
For this, I love the bookstore. For its half-decent coffee, free half-decent internet, and free entertainment, what else could a photographer – a professional observer of the world – ask for. Still, I come here more often without a camera. Or with a camera, rarely making a single image.
In just a few minutes, a whole roll of characters spin by:
A simple worker. Diligently keeping the shelves in order and knickknacks picked up. His monosyllabic name will likely never be known by a single shopper yet probably hundreds per day will ask him for help finding a book on better business practices or how to make people like you. I wonder how many books he has had time to read recently, since he might have taken this job in order to get the employee discount.
The skinny wanna-be skater guy with his one inconspicuously small “anarchy” tattoo on his forearm picking up the mens bodybuilding magazine and pretending to thumb through it all the while looking over the top at the other magazine covers featuring scantily clad women in the rack nearby.
Or the barely-able-old-enough-to-drive guy taking out the classmate he likes on a Saturday night, somehow ending up at the bookstore in hopes of stimulating conversation by picking up random books and laughing awkwardly at their titles. “Golfers Digest? I wonder what they ate! Haha… ha…” He’s trying so hard. Her dad probably played golf all of her young life. She still laughs politely. That’s what her parents taught her.
Or maybe the nerdy middle-aged guy without a wedding ring who goes to the bookstore a few times a week and gets really big books with hard-to-pronounce titles then, on his way out, picks up this month’s “Aquarium Fish” magazine… the hobby for which he lives.
There’s the older professor and the non-traditional student in her late twenties. They’re working on some impossible-to-understand homework problems, but by their body language, I can’t help but to think the professor would come out to help just about anybody in the class… but the student stays hopeful she’s special for some reason.
The gaggle of young mothers who are just wanting a break on a Saturday night. For a reason that escapes all others at the store the kids all had to come to the bookstore, too, but since they’re here and released upon all the patrons, the young women just hope they won’t be too loud or annoying or get them all kicked out for knocking over a display.
A black deaf man and his white companion – both in their 40’s – roams the aisles. The deaf man is dressed nicely in khakis and a Polo sweater; the white man is a little overweight wearing washed out blue jeans and an open green flannel shirt. They sign to each other – uncharacteristically – in their own world, the television or radio just as foreign as their language to me. Isolated. But very at home in a room full of words. The young mother’s young children make a raucous a dozen feet away in the next row… but the deaf man hears not.
An awkward-looking girl with thick glasses sits folded up in the aisle with all the manga and graphic novels. The whole cacophony is far away as she is completely absorbed in the book. Someone walks by. The slight breeze blown by the passerby’s pants legs dislodges some of her hair, her face still turned straight down deep in the world of her book. She turns the page, the hair stays fallen.
A group comes in all wearing army fatigues, the National Guard has had a training day. They’re all very young. They’re all very loud. A few of them swear fairly abrasively. Its obvious at all times where they are in the store.
The same place at which the skater boy stood earlier eying the girlie magazines, two women in their early 30’s pass, their hair cut extremely short. “Children come in here!” one of them comments. “They should really cover those up,” replies the other. They move on. At the other end of the store, I hear a clamor. The young women and their children must be exiting.
But then in all of that mix, there’s me. Somewhere in the back sitting in view of the most places in the store at once. Or maybe up in the front in the coffee shop. All of which I wish there was a way to photograph, to show to the world how normal and how bizarre… and how beautiful it all is.
The human condition. I love observing it all. I love photographing it all. But, no matter if I trip the shutter or not… I’ll still see it. It will still affect me. I will still learn from it.
Stay tuned,
-Noah D.
