On the Road of Curiosity

A friend of mine, Kim Walker, had posted a comment recently about how the curiosity of the villagers in a coal town was the same as my own inquisitiveness in being there and photographing the people, places… She couldn’t be more right.
I walked by this boy in a desolate and desperate section of his coal town. His glowing orange shirt stuck out in the drab of the landscape like the light of a train in the darkness of a tunnel. I stopped in my coal-dust tracks and stood there staring at him in the distance, and he stood there staring back at me. It was like we were each peering into some bizarre time-defying mirror of curiosity. He smiled at me occasionally and it gave me goosebumps in its innocence and fraternity. I walked behind a building to see if he would follow me. Seconds later he walked into my view again and looked around for the stranger with the camera. When he saw me he pretended he hadn’t.
At that moment beside a road littered with the dust of coal, a curious photographer made this photograph of a curious boy.