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People & Encounters

Face Revealed

At first she raised the black cloth across her face whenever I photographed her. But she was looking directly at me, and her eyes were already smiling.

Photographs and words by Brian Silver

Woman looking toward the camera while holding a black shawl across the lower half of her face.

Then she lowered it.

For the next few moments the exchange became almost playful—face revealed, face hidden again, laughter, another photograph. By the final frame the cloth was no longer between us and she was smiling openly.

It was a very brief encounter, but the sequence records something a single portrait could not: the interaction changing from one photograph to the next.

Woman looking toward the camera with the black shawl lowered around her shoulders and a bicycle behind her.
Woman looking down while raising the black shawl across the lower half of her face again.
Woman smiling with her face uncovered, turned slightly to one side, with a bicycle behind her.