While the Photographers Were Looking

I was at The Battery in New York with my daughter.

We were waiting to board a boat that would take us out into New York Harbor, between Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty.

At some point I turned around.

That's when I saw them.

Two photographers stood below me, both with their cameras raised and both completely absorbed in whatever they were photographing.

I don't remember what was below me that had caught their attention. I don't know whether they knew one another or what their relationship might have been.

I also don't think either one was photographing the other.

What I remember very clearly is my own reaction.

I found the situation funny.

There was no real thought process about whether I should make the photograph. I didn't have to study the composition or question whether there was something there.

The photograph seemed apparent to me immediately.

I raised my camera and took it.

Looking at them, I recognize something familiar.

There are times when I am working with a camera and become completely absorbed in what I am seeing. Everything else around me seems to become less important for a moment.

I call it being in the zone.

I believe each of these photographers was in a zone of their own.

And while they were concentrating on whatever had captured their attention, neither seemed to realize that they had captured mine.

While the Photographers Were Looking is built around layers of attention.

Two photographers occupy the central foreground, each holding a camera to the eye and directing attention toward something outside the frame. Their unseen subjects are irrelevant to the photograph's effectiveness; what matters is the intensity of their concentration.

Colón observes the scene from an elevated position. The wooden handrail and metal barrier crossing the foreground reinforce that physical separation and establish the photographer as an unseen observer positioned above the pair.

Around them, ordinary activity continues. Adults and children occupy the benches and wall behind them, a man holds a child, a stroller waits nearby, and pedestrians cross through the scene.

This surrounding activity is important. It establishes a public environment continuing independently of the photographers' concentrated attention.

The composition therefore contains several simultaneous acts of looking.

The two visible photographers look toward subjects outside the frame.

Colón looks at the photographers.

The viewer ultimately looks at all of them.

The humor of the photograph comes from this layering rather than from any staged interaction. Each photographer is occupied with a different frame, while only Colón's frame allows us to see the larger arrangement.

What makes me smile about this photograph today is how little thought was required to make it.

I turned around.

I saw them.

And immediately I knew there was a photograph.

There are photographs that require patience. Sometimes I wait for people to move, for light to change, or for the different parts of a composition to come together.

This wasn't one of those photographs.

The recognition was almost automatic.

Years later, I can also identify with the two photographers in a way that makes the scene even more familiar to me.

I know what it feels like to disappear behind a camera for a moment.

You become interested in something.

You raise the camera.

You begin thinking about what belongs inside the frame, and much of what exists outside it temporarily disappears.

They seemed to be experiencing that themselves.

Neither appeared to know I was there.

There is something wonderfully circular about that.

They were looking at something I can no longer remember.

I was looking at them.

And now, years later, I am looking at all of us through the photograph.

I still don't know what they were photographing.

I don't think I need to.

What mattered to them existed somewhere outside my frame.

What mattered to me was already inside it.

Preserved as the one hundred thirty-sixth accessioned photograph in the Francisco Colón Studio Photography Wing, While the Photographers Were Looking was made at The Battery in New York City on September 6, 2015.

Colón was at The Battery with his daughter while they waited to board a boat into New York Harbor toward the Statue of Liberty when he turned and noticed two photographers working below his position.

The photograph was made as an immediate response to the visual situation rather than as a constructed or prolonged study.

Neither the subjects being photographed nor the relationship between the two visible photographers is known, and the Studio intentionally leaves those questions unresolved.

What the photograph preserves with certainty is an intersection of attention: two photographers concentrating on scenes beyond the frame while another photographer recognizes them as the scene worth preserving.

Within the Studio collection, the work serves as an example of instinctive observation—the interval between noticing and making the photograph becoming so brief that the two acts are nearly inseparable.