Several weeks ago, on a sunday afternoon, a soft sunshine appeared. So I grabbed my teabox camera, a tripod, and set out for a walk to our town. At the end of the bridge, I shortly looked around, then I put up the tripod. Having the camera aligned and light measured, I opened the shutter ad look at my watch to measure two minutes. Being already used to blank looks of the passers-by, I ignore them bravely. Suddenly, a group of teens stops after passing around. Three girls, two boys, perhaps 15-16 years old. "Sir," asks one of them, "what is it?" I hesitate a bit, knowing that they do not want to hear anything longer than a few words. -- "A camera." -- "Really? And, how can it take pictures when it does not have that..." -- "What?" -- "You know, that... And how do you see what you have photographed, when it is made of wood?" The time flies, in my mind I see a picture appearing slowly in the developer tray under the red light, but somehow I am unable to transform the mental images to meaningful words. So I just breathe in -- and out. Several seconds of silence. They turn away. In a quick glimpse I still catch a clear message: Looking on one another, one of them taps on his forehead. They are walking on. I am closing the shutter and folding the tripod and go to a bench to change paper in a changing bag. Yes, we did not understand each other. My fault, I was totally unprepared. But still, I wonder: What is THAT which a camera must have to be able to take pictures?
And, by the way, here you can see what I photographed.
p_zlatymost.jpg
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