Reflection of “Perfect and Unrehearsed”

My favorite photo from Teju Coles’ essay is “A young Haitian man grieving at the funeral of his mother in Port-au-Prince, Haiti”, captured by Maggie Steber.  It is a documentary photo capturing the grief of a son calling out to his mother for one last time with the support of his community holding him up, not just the men physically holding him up but the sea of people walking with him. The photo being a wave of black, blue, white and grey, it represents a mix of death, hope, and security within this single photo. The dominant impression being the group of men in the forefront of the image. The men in the lower half of the picture are all in lighter colored dress shirts which make the son in all black stand out. The grieving young man has his arms stretched out a parallel to Jesus on the cross behind him and there are three crosses on the right side of the photo. The decisive moment was when suddenly the son shot up toward the sky and the last rays from the sunset catch his face. It gives a tragic story that as he has to deal with the death of his mother, an obviously difficult thing, he has to face the sunset of the day, possible the first one he has spent without her.