“Perfect and Unrehearsed” by Stephen Prado

In Teju Coles’s photo essay, my favorite picture I would like to say is of “A young Haitian man grieving  at the funeral of his mother in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.” In my opinion, this is a documentary photo, judging by the fact that the photo was taken at the moment a group of people are holding back the grieving man. Something that struck me has more to do with the background, this appears to be taken in a residential area, or at least a public setting, it has a large crowd of people indicating that the grieving man’s mother was very well known to people in that area. And with that, I’d like to represent my narrative of this photo. While yes, I can say that this photo shows the separation of a mother and son, it is correct, but I won’t do that, that’s too easy. How I see this photo is a much more a gathering, it shows that a common death in a group can bring everyone together to remember a great person in their life. The fact that people went out of their way to hold a public funeral for the grieving man’s mom shows the impact that that woman had in their life.