between looking and being looked at

Today I photographed #39ED77 for TWO WAYS OF BEING REAL.

She went about her day while I followed her with my camera.

At one point, she was working naked by the ground-floor window, right in the middle of the city.

I asked her if that ever felt strange.

She smiled and told me she does it quite often. Sometimes people passing by are surprised.

A little later, three women stopped outside the window.

They watched #39ED77.
They watched me photographing her.

One of them simply said:

“How cool is that.”

For a moment, the distance between looking and being looked at disappeared. #39ED77 was simply herself, I was simply photographing her, and the women outside were simply witnessing it—without judgment, without performance, without needing to belong to the scene.

Nothing about the encounter had been staged. And yet, in that brief exchange, everyone became part of the same image: two ways of being real, meeting in plain sight.

pete john