“He held the camera out for me to see. It was a women, her sunken eyes looking straight at the camera. ‘I don’t want your money’, her cardboard sign read. ‘Just look at me so I know I exist’. The words and her expression were arresting on their own, but they weren’t what made the photograph so compelling. It was the people in the foreground, the passersby, eyes glued to their phones as they hurried to wherever they were going at lunch, completely oblivious of the women with the sign.”
