In his essay “Perfect and Unrehearsed” Teju Cole presents a photograph that I find to be the most captivating of a crowd huddled in the rain. Their umbrellas note a myriad of shapes and colors, all directed toward a monument. The photograph is decidedly documentary photography in that it captures a fleeting moment of shared experience, with individuals neither posing nor conscious of the camera. The photograph implicitly narrates with great significance an account of endurance and contemplation regarding this group of people who choose to endure the elements to be present for a shared moment of significance, likely some memorial or ceremony. 

In this image, we do not have a moment of great action, but rather a moment of quiet endurance. The rain, rather than distracting us, becomes an element that adds texture and mood to the image, and in doing so elicits timeless feelings of quiet isolation among a group of people together. The rawness and authenticity of the scene exemplifies the power of photography to document un-posed moments in time. The prevailing feeling in the photo is one of poise and reverence, as if time was frozen for just a moment. Through this image, Cole points to the preciousness of the moment, and the latent emotion rooted within it, as it relates to our common experience as human beings; we are all waiting, we are all witnessing, and we are all remembering.