I have this habit (good or bad, haven’t decided) of naming my portrait subjects. In my framed gallery of candids, I used to have names for every one of them. A lot were called Mohammed. None were Teddy Bears.
Bad Joke.
This is my Uncle Ahmad, taken on the streets of Beograd on August 20, 2004.
I had sat down on a streetside cafe (after several hours of walking around) on Knez Mihailova Street. It’s a wide thoroughfare in the center of Beograd converted into a pedestrian mall. Think Stephen Avenue in Calgary, only twice as wide. Sipping hot and strong Turkish coffee (my waiter, who spoke excellent excellent French with me, owing to his having lived in Quebec for a few years) was somewhat taken aback that I didn’t want suger for it. Up high, down the street, was a huge JumboTron showing Olympic volleyball. Serbia and Montenegro was playing… someone. Can’t remember who. Back when Serbia had Montenegro.
To my left, this old man sat down in a window ledge for a breather. He had wrapped around his arm a bag of what I thought were cigarettes. A police officer came along and began giving Ahmad a hard time. At least in my mind he was. The police guy was looking at the bag, and the old guy was shrugging his shoulders. Eventually he (the cop) left, and the old guy continued watching the volleyball match.
And I continued to shoot. At one point, he looked at me, and smiled. I felt a bit self conscious snapping photos. He seemed non-plussed. My dress, and perhaps my general look, suggested I was an outsider, which he seemed to acknowledge.
There are a million stories in the Naked City. Ahmad’s was one of those. I would have liked to find out more.