Before the Song

Melina is my friend, and I care for her like a little sister. She had hired me to record a music video for her cover of a Shakira song. We arrived at Miami Beach before sunrise, ready to work.

At one point, she walked down toward the water to take a photograph of the morning. I watched her standing there with her phone, facing the light, and I made this photograph of her. It was a moment outside the work we had come to do.

I have always wanted to see her efforts rewarded. I know the applause and gratitude she receives after singing matter deeply. Still, as her friend, I cannot help hoping that one day her work will receive recognition on an even larger stage. When I look at this photograph, I see Melina at the beginning of a day we shared, taking a moment to see something beautiful for herself.

Melina's dark figure anchors the center of the frame while her shadow extends diagonally across the foreground. The low sun lies outside her immediate space, drawing the eye past her toward its reflection on the water. Her raised phone makes her act of looking visible: she is photographing the morning while Colón photographs her.

The open ocean gives the figure room without isolating her. Sunlight outlines her hair and shoulder, while the restrained detail in her dress preserves the strength of the silhouette. The photograph's emotional weight comes from that relationship between two viewpoints: hers, directed toward the sunrise, and the photographer's, directed toward his friend.

There are moments before a performance when a person is briefly free of the expectations surrounding it. The work ahead has not begun. The audience has not arrived. There is time to look toward the water and keep one small piece of the morning.

Melina's photograph of the sunrise and Colón's photograph of Melina began at nearly the same instant. Each records an act of attention. One follows the light; the other recognizes the person who turned toward it.

Before the Song enters the People collection as a portrait made within a working friendship. Its record preserves Melina Almodóvar's identity, the circumstances of the Miami Beach music video shoot, and Colón's account of why this unposed moment matters to him.

Within the Photography Wing, the work extends a recurring interest in people observed between planned events. The music video brought photographer and singer to the beach; the photograph was made during a pause of her own choosing. That distinction is central to the work's place in the collection.