Photographing Reality

(For Eve Arnold)

 

Your untaught hands picked up a camera

and never put it down, finding

instinct for the picture

that carries the burden of history

so lightly it seems no burden at all.

 

Icons of stage and screen; children and women

whose lives are never seen,

all gently caught; held

in your gaze, your lens capturing

the essence of their lives and times.

 

Deceptively simple is this art of yours,

framing faces in a view-finder

to create a pleasing image

that seems by accident to encapsulate

history, yet somehow magically transcends it.