Journeys
Crossing Frontiers
A meditation on movement, anticipation, and the unseen purpose behind a journey.
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Connection gives meaning to place. A city, a journey, or a familiar view can become part of our personal history because of the people whose lives crossed ours there.
The photographs in this exhibition explore the visible and invisible bonds between people, landscapes, and memory. Some connections appear within the frame. Others exist just beyond it.
The Exhibition
Featured Works
Cities
The Heart of Buenos Aires
An elevated view across Buenos Aires becomes a meditation on place, memory, and the city where a life-changing story quietly began.
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Reflections
The Keeper of Paris
A silent statue overlooking Paris becomes the visible guardian of a memory whose most important presence remained just outside the frame.
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People
Before the Laughter
A street performer pauses in quiet anticipation before the first laugh is heard. Captured moments before a public performance begins, the photograph reflects on preparation, possibility, and the unseen intervals from which shared memories emerge.
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Journeys
Crossing Horizons
The sweeping form of the Puente de la Mujer stretches across the water toward the Buenos Aires skyline. Inspired by the structure's association with tango, the photograph searches for movement, grace, and humanity within steel and cables.
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People
Songs for Strangers
A solitary musician uses the natural acoustics of a London pedestrian tunnel to offer music to anyone passing through. The photograph reflects on generosity, anonymous connection, and the lasting value of art shared without expectation.
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People
The Language of Tango
A young tango performer receives quiet assistance moments before performing. Captured without interruption, the photograph reflects on trust, preparation, and the unspoken language shared between artists before the music begins.
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People
The Last Touch
A tango performer carefully adjusts her partner's scarf before another street performance. The brief gesture becomes a meditation on trust, professionalism, and the quiet acts of care that precede public artistry.
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People
The Music Awaiting
An unattended guitar, music stand, and empty chairs preserve the quiet interval between performances. The photograph reflects on friendship, memory, and the way music remains present even after the musicians step away.
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Journeys
A Walk Down the Aisle
A symmetrical path through the Gardens of Versailles carries both the visual invitation to continue walking and the private memory of a kiss shared moments after the photograph was made.
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People
The First Chord
A young guitarist practices beside a weathered doorway in Granada, preserving the uncertain and hopeful stage before mastery, recognition, or applause.
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People
Sofia Sleeping on the Moon
A sleeping newborn portrait becomes a family testament to survival, collective care, possibility, and the hopes carried within the names Sofia and Luz.
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Journeys
Where My Journey Began — 1492
A meticulously stitched panorama of the Alhambra at sunset becomes a personal encounter with history and the long connection between Granada, Spain, the Americas, and the artist's own journey.
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Journeys
The Waiting Room
A quiet morning in a hotel room in the Bahamas becomes a record of a ritual repeated across years of international travel—room service, work, phone calls, waiting, and eventually another departure.
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Journeys
Ready to Go
Seated in the lobby of a Marriott Hotel in El Salvador, dressed for business with tie, dress shoes, and work bag at hand, the photographer waits for transportation to take him to a customer meeting. The image preserves one of the ordinary intervals behind years of international business travel—the quiet moment after getting ready but before the workday truly began.
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Journeys
Passengers in Passing
A New York City subway train rushes past the platform at 86th Street in Manhattan as passengers briefly emerge through its windows. Created from a sequence of photographs made on September 5, 2015, the final composition combines selected moments from the passing train, preserving individual passengers within the surrounding motion.
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Journeys
Between Stops
Passengers wait across the tracks at Fulton Street subway station in Manhattan on September 6, 2015. Framed by the station's aged steel columns, the people occupy separate spaces along the same platform—some standing together, others alone, checking a phone, carrying luggage, or simply waiting. Photographed while traveling through New York City with my daughter on our way toward the Battery, the image captures an ordinary pause between destinations.
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Cities
Into the Memorial
Visitors move through the interior of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum in New York City, where monumental concrete planes frame an illuminated network of stairs and escalators. Silhouetted figures and their reflections cross the dark foreground while the architecture draws the eye toward the brighter interior beyond. The photograph captures the scale, geometry, light, and human movement within the museum space.
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Cities
Those Who Come, Those Who Leave
A photographic diptych created inside the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City on September 5, 2015. Two opposing views of the museum's escalators contrast visitors moving in different directions through the memorial. Monumental concrete walls, converging lines, available light, and human movement connect the two photographs. Made without flash to avoid disturbing the shared purpose and quiet significance of the memorial, the work observes the continuous passage of people who come to learn, remember, mourn, share, and pay tribute.
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Cities
The Other Colón
Teatro Colón stands along the streets of Buenos Aires, Argentina, photographed on August 8, 2015. Its symmetrical façade and elaborate architectural details rise above the everyday movement of the city. Photographed as part of a familiar walk through Buenos Aires, the image preserves the theater within its urban surroundings, including pedestrians, traffic signals, and the nearby Avenida 9 de Julio. The photograph also carries a personal connection for the photographer: the theater and Francisco Colón share the same name.
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Nature
Life Inside the Caldera
Clouds descend across the steep walls of the Pululahua volcanic caldera in Ecuador while patches of sunlight reveal farms, roads, homes, and cultivated fields across the valley floor. The panoramic photograph contrasts the immense scale of the volcanic landscape with the quiet evidence of everyday human life continuing within it.
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Cities
Paris, Unhurried
Two women share an evening conversation outside a neighborhood café in Paris while a white scooter rests along the curb. Empty chairs, illuminated storefronts, and passing reflections surround a quiet human moment unfolding within the movement of the city.
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Cities
The Weight of Promises
Thousands of love locks cover the Pont de l’Archevêché beside Notre-Dame on a rainy February day in Paris. As a solitary visitor pauses to photograph the bridge, the accumulated padlocks transform private declarations of devotion into a public monument. Created on February 25, 2013, the image preserves a temporary chapter of Parisian history before the locks were removed because of their structural weight and environmental impact.
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people
The City Keeps Walking
An unidentified person bends over a crutch while holding a small cup on a Paris sidewalk as pedestrians continue with their daily lives. Photographed near the Seine on February 26, 2013, the scene presents a quieter contrast to the familiar image of Paris as the City of Love and the City of Light. Whether the person was experiencing pain, disability, poverty, or performing a practiced role remains unknown. The photograph preserves what could be observed without claiming what could not be known.
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People
The Everyday Runway
Two women walk side by side through Paris, their blonde hair, scarves, long coats, and coordinated handbags creating an unplanned study of everyday fashion. One combines a dark flowing coat with heels, while the other pairs a fitted brown coat and matching bag with patterned leggings and athletic shoes. Photographed as they moved naturally through the city, the scene transforms an ordinary Paris sidewalk into an everyday runway.
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People
When the Observer Appears
A Paris jewelry workshop becomes a layered study of performance, display, and observation. A colorful Le Cabaret poster occupies the central window, surrounded by costume jewelry, crystal ornaments, and a mannequin adorned for presentation. Reflected within the glass, the photographer intentionally enters the scene, transforming an ordinary storefront photograph into a deliberate self-portrait.
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People
The Company of Empty Chairs
A solitary woman sits aboard Tattershall Castle, a floating pub and entertainment venue moored on the River Thames opposite the London Eye. Quietly smoking while rows of empty tables and chairs surround her, she appears absorbed in her own thoughts. Warm light separates her from the darkness as blue deck lights and reflections move across the river behind her. Photographed from a considerable distance shortly after midnight, the scene preserves a private moment of contemplation within a space intended for conversation, companionship, and crowds.
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People
Where the Wall Opens
Two people share a quiet embrace within a small opening in a weathered stone wall overlooking the sea in Cartagena, Colombia. Surrounded by the scale and texture of the historic architecture, their intimate connection appears momentarily sheltered from the world around them. The opening creates a natural frame, transforming a fleeting human gesture into the emotional center of the composition.
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People
A Smile Between Buses
During a business trip to Cartagena, Colombia, Francisco Colón noticed a woman seated inside a bus positioned alongside his own. At first, she did not realize that he intended to photograph her. He raised his camera and gestured for her to smile. She understood, turned toward him, and offered the expression preserved here. The photograph records a brief, wordless collaboration between two strangers before their separate journeys continued.
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People
She Saw Me First
An unexpected reunion unfolds in the middle of a Pride parade in Mexico City. While photographing the celebration from an elevated position, I was suddenly spotted by a friend I had first met during a business trip to Mexico City in 2003 and had not seen since 2006. Her raised arm, direct gaze, and spontaneous expression of joy capture the instant of recognition—one familiar face finding another within the movement of a crowded street.
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Cities
Everything Leads There
A bed of orange cempasúchil stretches along Paseo de la Reforma toward the Ángel de la Independencia in Mexico City. Flowers, roadway, trees, traffic, and surrounding architecture create overlapping lines of perspective that converge near the distant monument. Though the Ángel occupies only a small portion of the frame, the composition continually draws the eye toward it, transforming an ordinary view along the avenue into a study of distance, perspective, and destination.
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People
Stillness in the Feathers
While walking through Mexico City on an ordinary day, Francisco Colón unexpectedly encountered a cultural gathering on a street corner. Among the people, color, movement, and elaborate feathered regalia, one woman caught his attention for precisely the opposite reason: her stillness. Photographed in profile, she appears composed and contemplative amid an event celebrating Mexica/Aztec-inspired cultural traditions. The photograph became a study of contrast—between movement and stillness, visual intensity and quiet presence, and ancestral imagery within a modern city.
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Nature
Through the Leaves
Photographed from the balcony of Francisco Colón's apartment in Mexico City, Through the Leaves finds a brilliant red geranium surrounded by layers of tropical foliage and the warm geometry of a wooden railing. Foreground leaves partially obscure the scene, creating the sensation of looking through the garden rather than simply observing it from outside. Made during an ordinary afternoon of photographing close to home, the image reflects how familiar surroundings can reveal unexpected compositions when given closer attention.
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Reflections
Misma llave, misma puerta
Beyond the darkened resort, the Caribbean meets the first light of morning. A narrow line of orange divides the sea from a sky still holding the night, while the illuminated pool below glows electric blue. Made during a few private days in Cancún, the photograph became connected to Misma llave, misma puerta—not simply as a record of a place, but as the atmosphere surrounding a memory.
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Journeys
The View I Asked For
From a high corner room at the Sheraton, Rio de Janeiro unfolds between a forested hillside and the Atlantic Ocean, with the coastline leading toward Leblon and Copacabana. It was a view repeatedly requested during many visits to the city. The photograph preserves more than familiar scenery—it recalls the place where Portuguese was learned through conversations with local people and where the rhythms of samba began finding their way into compositions written with Spanish lyrics.
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Cities
Where the Mountains Hold the City
Photographed at approximately 7:23 AM from the rooftop of a hotel overlooking Copacabana, this elevated view reveals Rio de Janeiro as a city held between architecture and mountains. After receiving permission from the front desk, the photographer was escorted to the rooftop by hotel security specifically to make the image. An illuminated avenue leads through the dense arrangement of buildings toward the surrounding peaks, while scattered hillside lights remain visible in the emerging morning. The camera recorded 4:23 AM because its clock remained set to Miami time—three hours behind Rio de Janeiro on January 25, 2007.
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Francisco Colón Studio Photography Wing
Where She First Walked
A hillside community rises above the shoreline of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, photographed from the water shortly after the artist and his family gathered at sea to spread his mother's ashes. Somewhere among these homes is the place where she spent part of her earliest childhood, connecting the landscape of her beginnings with the family's return generations later.
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Photography Wing
Standing His Ground
A lone dog stands at the entrance to a narrow passage leading toward the Thames Path in London. Framed between contrasting brick buildings, the animal appears almost stationed at the threshold, transforming an ordinary passageway into a moment of quiet uncertainty and observation.
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Photography Wing
A Stranger Who Reads
While walking through Chelsea near the River Thames in London, Francisco Colón noticed a warmly illuminated window in an otherwise dark building. Through the glass were shelves filled with books, a lamp, and an unidentified portrait. His own love of books created an unexpected sense of connection with someone he had never met—a relationship discovered simply by looking.
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Photography Wing
The Space He Occupied
The Space He Occupied documents British artist John Haydn Colley (1967–2019) at work in Granada, Spain, on April 8, 2014, seated on the pavement as he creates a large architectural drawing on cardboard. More than twelve years later, while revisiting the original RAW photograph, Francisco Colón discovered Colley’s web address written along the edge of the drawing and traced it to The Lost Photographer, where Colley had documented his experience in Granada at the time. Colón subsequently discovered a public notice reporting that Colley died on May 11, 2019, at IPO Hospital in Lisbon, Portugal. The Studio has not independently verified the circumstances of his death. What began as a photograph of an unidentified street artist has become a record of a named artist, his work, and an encounter whose significance was not understood when the photograph was made.
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Photography Wing
I Disturbed His Sleep
While walking through Mexico City late at night, Francisco Colón encountered an area where several people were sleeping along a wall. As he photographed one man surrounded by his belongings, the man opened his eyes and briefly looked directly toward the camera. Moments later, he covered his face and returned to sleep. Colón never learned his name or circumstances and never saw him again. The photograph preserves only what was witnessed: a stranger, a temporary place to sleep, and a brief moment of awareness between the person being photographed and the person behind the camera.
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People
Before the Song
Before a music video shoot at Miami Beach, salsa singer Melina Almodóvar pauses at the shoreline to photograph the rising sun. Seen in silhouette against the ocean, she casts a long shadow across the sand in a portrait made by her friend Francisco Colón.
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Journeys
A Passage by Liberty
A sailboat crosses New York Harbor in silhouette as the Statue of Liberty rises beyond it against the last color of the evening sky. Francisco Colón made the photograph on September 6, 2015, during a boat outing with his daughter—a return to a landmark he had first studied closely while drawing it for his seventh-grade art teacher in the bicentennial year of 1976.
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Nature
Beyond the Mangroves
In Fort Lauderdale, a white walkway leads through an opening in the mangroves toward a small pavilion across still water. Francisco Colón made the photograph on April 23, 2015, during a short outing with his friend Sarah, while he was learning more about composition and editing. The trees, exposed roots, and reflections became part of his study of how to guide a viewer's eye through a scene.
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Cities
Where the Morning Was Going
At daybreak in Santiago, traffic gathers beneath an elevated viewpoint while water runs through a channel toward the quieter buildings beyond. Francisco Colón made the photograph in March 2015, knowing that in a few hours he would be waiting for someone to arrive. The city was already moving; for him, the morning had begun moving toward her.
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Cities
The Homage Remains
On a walk through Granada’s Sacromonte in 2014, Francisco Colón photographed a street mural of flamenco singer Enrique Morente. Painted by El Niño de las Pinturas in 2011 as a tribute after Morente’s death, the portrait shares its wall with graffiti, exposed brick, electrical cables, and the marks of passing time. Colón’s photograph preserves both the homage and the street that holds it.
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Cities
Where Conversation Waits
On a nighttime walk beside the River Thames, Francisco Colón photographed a red telephone box near an empty bench. A row of bicycles waits behind them. The telephone offers a way to speak across a distance; the bench offers a place to speak side by side. In their shared emptiness, the scene invites a question about how the places we use to connect with one another change over time.
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Cities
The Mountain They Built
The Pyramid of the Moon rises from the ancient city of Teotihuacán with Cerro Gordo extending across the horizon behind it. The pyramid was positioned to echo the mountain’s profile, allowing human construction and the surrounding landscape to appear as a single ascending form. Visitors gathered along its terraces provide a measure of scale, while the mountain reminds us that the builders were not attempting to separate their city from nature—they were placing it in conversation with the land.
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People
Today, It Was Free
During a Pride march in Mexico City, a young woman gladly stopped and posed for Francisco Colón while holding a sign that read, “Bésame, hoy es gratis”—“Kiss me, today it’s free.” He did not notice the message until he later reviewed the photograph, making it an invitation he unknowingly declined. Behind her, a vast crowd celebrates the freedom to be visible, expressive, playful, and entirely oneself. The photograph preserves both the humor of a missed opportunity and the joyful openness of the day.
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People
The Face of the Peacemaker
At first glance, the man's intense expression might be mistaken for anger or confrontation. The truth of the moment was quite different. During a demonstration against the meat industry in Mexico City, tensions rose between protesters and the police assembled behind them. The man in the white shirt moved through the crowd, speaking with people and encouraging them to remain peaceful. Here, he is not staring someone down—he is listening with complete concentration. Peace does not always arrive with a gentle expression. Sometimes it wears the face of vigilance, courage, and resolve.
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People
The One Everyone Watched
Before my daughter and I boarded a boat from The Battery for a closer view of the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan, a dog sitting motionless on a waterfront bench captured everyone's attention. He remained perfectly composed, staring steadily in one direction while New York continued around him. People stopped, watched, smiled, and raised their cameras. The bench became his stage, the crowd became his audience, and for a brief moment, the quietest presence in the scene became its undeniable star.
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Cities & Architecture
Around the Bend at Frankenstein Castle
A stone passage curves beneath an arch at Frankenstein Castle in Mühltal, Germany. Sunlight reaches the wall while the walkway remains in shadow, leading the eye toward an open sky and a distant view. Francisco Colón made the photograph while exploring the castle with his daughter.
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People & Daily Life
The Chair Beside Her
Two beach chairs face the Atlantic beneath a dramatic sunrise, one occupied and one left empty. The glowing clouds stretch across the sky while the shoreline remains quiet below, creating a scene that feels both intimate and expansive. The empty chair becomes more than part of the setting. Together, the two chairs establish a quiet relationship within the composition, framed by the changing light of morning.
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Photography Wing
Where Our Histories Meet
Where Our Histories Meet portrays the Russian Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene on the Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt, Germany, photographed during a 2014 return to a city deeply connected to Francisco Colón's family history. Colón first encountered the chapel while stationed in Darmstadt with the U.S. Army and later brought his wife there; decades afterward, he returned with their daughter, who was born in nearby Frankfurt. Built for Russian Emperor Nicholas II and his family during their visits to Darmstadt, the chapel brought together personal memory, family, history, and the quiet weight of return.
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Photography Wing
The Quiet Introduction
The Quiet Introduction captures a chestnut horse encountered during a walk in Killeen, Texas, on December 24, 2017. Standing quietly in its pasture near the home of Francisco Colón's former wife, the horse turned its attention toward the photographer, creating a brief moment of recognition between them. Its steady gaze, falling blond mane, and the softly rendered fence and trees transform an unplanned encounter into a quiet study of presence and connection.
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Photography Wing
What Continues
While walking through Frankfurt with his daughter, Francisco Colón noticed a repeating line of metal posts and chains stretching along the street. The posts were the subject. Their repetition and diminishing scale created the leading line that caused him to stop and make the photograph. Years later, returning to the image revealed other forms of continuation already present within the frame: tram tracks following the street, the sidewalk extending alongside them, parked cars repeating into the distance, and buildings carrying the city beyond what can be seen. What began as a deliberate study of repetition and perspective gradually became a photograph about something larger: what continues.
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Photography Wing
A Place to Remember
Early one morning in Plaza General San Martín in Buenos Aires, Francisco Colón photographed an open section of the park after rain. Wet pavement stretches beneath the canopy of a massive tree, while a solitary bench rests near the balustrade overlooking the lower reaches of Retiro. The tree, bench, pavement, and surrounding landscape are important elements, but none is individually the subject. The subject is the space itself—a place Colón repeatedly returned to during visits to Buenos Aires, not for its landmarks or history, but for the quiet experience of simply being there.
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People
While the Photographers Were Looking
While waiting with his daughter to board a boat into New York Harbor, Francisco Colón turned around and noticed two photographers below him, each absorbed in making a photograph of something outside the frame. The situation registered immediately. While families rested nearby and people continued through The Battery, the two photographers remained concentrated on whatever had caught their attention, apparently unaware that they had become the subject of another photographer observing them from above.
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Reflections
The Picture That Stayed
Photographed from New York Harbor in 2015, The Picture That Stayed records the Statue of Liberty against the fading colors of an evening sky. For Francisco Colón, however, the photograph reaches much farther back than the moment of exposure. His relationship with Liberty began in 1976, when a seventh-grade art teacher unexpectedly asked him to enlarge a small image of the statue into a drawing approximately the size of a door. Nearly four decades later, traveling through New York Harbor with his daughter, Colón finally encountered the figure he had studied so carefully as a boy and made a picture of her for himself.
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Cities
Along the Rhine, Together
Sooneck Castle rises above the wooded hillside near Niederheimbach along the Rhine River in Germany. Photographed from a river cruise in 2014, the castle was one of several encountered during a journey Francisco Colón had wanted to make for many years. The cruise became part of a return to Germany with his daughter, where they revisited the country in which she was born while also experiencing something neither of them had done before.
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Cities
The Detail I Remembered
Rheinstein Castle rises above a steep wooded hillside near Trechtingshausen, Germany, overlooking the Rhine River. Francisco Colón photographed the castle during a 2014 Rhine cruise with his daughter. Although the towers and dramatic position above the river commanded the landscape, one much smaller feature remained particularly memorable: a metal basket projecting from one of the towers. More than a decade later, that small detail remained one of Colón's clearest memories of encountering the castle.
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People
She Was In On It
After a day traveling along the Rhine River in Germany with his daughter in 2014, Francisco Colón and other members of their tour group had finished a meal and stepped outside. One of the women from the group raised her camera toward Colón. Almost automatically, he raised his camera toward her. She photographed him while he photographed her. Standing beside him, his daughter laughed at the exchange. The two photographers never exchanged their photographs, leaving this image as Colón's view of a brief and spontaneous encounter shared with his daughter during a journey she still remembers as one of her best.
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Reflections
The Car That Takes Me Back
A yellow Volkswagen Beetle parked along a street in Old San Juan became an immediate connection to another time in Francisco Colón's life. Colón had owned two Volkswagen Beetles, beginning with his first car at Fort Knox in 1983 and followed by a 1973 Beetle while living in Darmstadt, Germany. That second car became part of the story surrounding the birth of his daughter. Encountering another Beetle decades later in Puerto Rico brought those memories immediately back.
View the photograph →Curator's Reflection
We often remember places through the people connected to them. A street becomes a conversation. A skyline becomes a beginning. A monument becomes inseparable from the person who once stood beside us.
The photograph preserves the setting. Memory preserves the relationship.