© Mike Nakhla MS4
Judge’s Comments
This candid portrait of a short-order cook captures a spontaneous moment in a distant land. It’s a subtle reminder that for every image, there exists both a subject and the individual not pictured – the phhotographer. Though we are staring at Nafees (assuming this is his name), he is glaring at the photographer, perhaps wondering why a camera is pointed at him, and (I suspect) not welcoming it at all. His headphones imply that his attention is partially elsewhere and he’s cooking a mysterious dish, so this image raises many questions about what brought the photographer and subject together, how that moment came to be, what happened before and after the image was made, and whether the captured emotion endured or was fleeting.