Where the Morning Was Going

I wanted to photograph Santiago as it woke up. From the window, I could see traffic building on the roads and water flowing through the city. Everyone seemed to be going somewhere. I could not know what any of them needed to do that day, but I knew why I was there.

In a few hours, I would be waiting for her to arrive. Looking toward the buildings, I thought about the people who were still asleep, and I knew she was waking up somewhere too. My clock had already begun, even though I did not feel rushed. Time felt as though it was on my side. I could stand there, watch, and let the morning unfold.

When I look at the photograph now, I think of all those separate purposes moving through one place. I fulfilled mine that day, and she fulfilled hers. I will never know whether everyone else fulfilled theirs. Their journeys were real to them, even if all I could see were the roads they traveled.

The elevated viewpoint holds several kinds of movement in a single frame. Traffic fills the foreground and converges near the bridge. The water channel cuts diagonally through the city, carrying the eye toward the buildings in the distance. Trees and darkened windows slow the composition beyond the busy intersection.

The headlights and pale water make two visible currents. One is shaped by people choosing routes and destinations; the other follows the course of the channel. Neither reveals where an individual journey will end. That visual uncertainty allows Colón’s private anticipation to coexist with a city whose other lives remain beyond his knowledge.

A city lets us witness movement while concealing its reasons. From a distance, a line of cars can look like a single current. Inside each one is a separate life, carrying an errand, an obligation, a hope, or perhaps no settled plan at all. We can see that people are going somewhere without knowing what it would mean for them to arrive.

The water offers another measure of time. It keeps moving through the frame while the roads meet, divide, and fill again. Watching both, Colón had an unusual freedom: he knew his own purpose, yet he did not have to hurry toward it. Waiting for her was already part of being with her in his thoughts. For a little while, he could let the city have his attention too.

He knows what became of his day and of hers. The other journeys remain open. That is part of what a photograph can hold: many lives sharing one moment, each moving beyond the edge of the frame toward an ending the photographer will never see.

Where the Morning Was Going enters the Cities collection as a view of Santiago shaped by a personal appointment. The image preserves the visible city at daybreak; Colón’s account records the anticipation that cannot be seen within the frame.

The work also connects the Photography Wing to Fronteras y Ecos and “Habitación de Paso” in the Music Room. That connection does not turn the photograph into an illustration of the song. It records how a morning, a journey, and a later piece of music can carry related memories within the Studio archive.