Photos Not Taken                                               (either because I didn't have my camera or lacked the nerve)

5/15/2013

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In the background, the razor-wired wall of the Spanish embassy. At center, a Chinese guard in bright green uniform marches stiffly down the fine wide pavement, back straight, chin out, eyes locked on the horizon, the gold stripes of his uniform flashing in the dappled shade, left knee thrust forward, left arm swinging back. In his right arm he holds a purple mop.

219
A man stands on a cracked village sidewalk looking at our tour bus. A cigarette hangs from his lips. In his left hand he holds a hoe standing upright. In his right hand he grasps two tools, a hatchet and a knife. The metal is dull, the sky hazy. Nothing shines in the photograph.

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October 18th, 2012

10/18/2012

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         Roast chickens twirling on spits.
         Bok choy and eggplant laid out on blue blankets on the pavement at the market.
         Down a long corridor I see a tall man with gray hair walking home, flanked by the clay-red walls that make such a dramatic perspective shot. Again, no camera, and I’d need a tripod anyway this time of night. The red walls are a wonderfully muted color. Ashen. Not brick-red or China-red, not pink. Earlier that day I saw a bunch of dried chiles, bright red against a black grill. I wanted my camera. I wouldn’t have needed permission to take a picture of peppers.
         Not so for the sentries standing guard at the entrance to the armed police compound. And this is where writing beats photography. I wouldn’t dare take their photo, but I can aim my eyes straight at them and print their images to mind: two men standing still as Beefeaters on little carpeted stages, surrounded by waist-high panes of glass. The glass glints in the September sun. The sentries barely flick their eyes at the black Audis with communist party plates rolling through the gate.
      Sometimes I miss shots because I don’t have my camera.
      Other times I know better than to pull out my DSLR and snap a photo of a club-footed beggar in the subway tunnel. It’s not that I want a picture of the destitute man; it’s only that my eye is trained to notice the unusual. I’d like to get some shots of everyday workers, too, but I'm hesitant to point and shoot at the man hauling longevity noodles in plastic bags on the back of his tricycle, or the woman washing her clothes in plastic bins in the street. Even the construction worker taking his cigarette break beside a sewer hole makes me nervous. Like a lot of laborers around here, he wears a sport coat and looks to be from outside Beijing. His spiky silver hair and sun-leathered skin would make a good portrait.    
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