The Art of Being Done

Found Moments: vignettes pulled from the flow of travel and time

I’ve been thinking lately about the kind of photographs that stay with me. It’s interesting that, out of an archive of thousands of images, there are some that sit clearly in my mind, even if taken years ago. They aren’t necessarily dramatic or perfectly composed or what we photographers tend to call a ‘hero’ image, but often quiet captures that I’ve ‘snapped’ in passing because something has resonated. The ones where nothing much is happening, except life itself.

This is the first in a new series I’m calling Found Moments — small slices of humanity pulled from the flow of travel and time. Often unplanned. Always unposed.

Couple sitting at the Forbidden City, Beijing (2016)

It was her posture that caught my attention as I wandered through the sea of humanity that converges daily at the Forbidden City in Beijing.

Amid the imperial grandeur, I spotted them - two figures who had surrendered to stillness while everyone else moved in a ceaseless orbit around the ancient pavilions.

You can feel the mood - it’s almost visceral.

The palace grounds teemed with tourists that day, as they do every day. The air vibrated with multilingual chatter and the authoritative projections of tour guides. Battalions of visitors in colour-coded baseball caps followed raised flags and boards, while thousands of feet scuffed across centuries-old stone in a collective, weary shuffle. Yet these two had simply stopped.

He looks stoically composed; a resigned patience. She, however, tells a different story. Her body language speaks volumes - one hand massaging a foot that is surely aching from hours of walking; her head resting heavily in her other palm; her expression transcending language barriers with universal clarity. She’s had enough!

What I love about this image is how human it is. There's no performance here, no carefully curated travel moment destined for social media. Just two people caught in a very honest moment of shared weariness. We don’t need to know the whole story — the scene says enough. And I empathised; how I empathised. I felt an immediate kinship with her obvious discomfort - that particular brand of travel weariness when wonder gives way to overwhelming sensory fatigue.

Sometimes the best travel memories aren’t the grand ones. They’re the ones where you see someone - really see them - in all their unguarded humanity.

Crowds of tourists at the Forbidden City, Beijing (2016)