Awe

I have no information on this photograph.  I don't even remember where I found it.  But I think it's a nearly perfect example of what this kind of photography can do.  An exact moment is caught, and in that moment the thoughts and emotions of those being photographed is forever made evident.  And there's something about the camera's ability to crystallize that thought and emotion that allows us a very pure empathy with the photograph's subject that would never be available with a painting or any other kind of posed or planned image; the humanity is immediately accessible and seemingly unfiltered.

If anyone has any information about this photograph, I'd love to know it.  Although, really, the story is all here:  What look to be prep school boys crowd around an athlete who has performed or is about to perform some sort of impressive skill; his pride, his acknowledgment of their - expected - admiration is all there in his expression.  And then these young boys at that age when they can unguardedly wonder at the power and virility of the athlete, this remarkable other, a grown man, at just that moment when they are beginning to evolve into that very thing, themselves; they are almost in love with this flesh and blood image of the man they will become.