They are everywhere. Hidden, ignored stories that pass us by just as fast as the hours of our lives. What’s amazing is how easy it is to ignore them, or plainly, not see them. They hide in plain sight behind counters at the deli, behind the brisk steps of someone in a hurry, or by the side of the street as rubbish. All of them as important as our own, but just as ignored. Perhaps the result of a world in constant motion that has little time for the individual. We are all passing by, in a sense, deprived of the time and patience that these stories demand if they are ever going to be told. And while this observation is more descriptive than judgmental of the lives we live, it nevertheless identifies a gap in our modern way of living. We look, but we don’t see; we care, but we ignore it. Se la vie, I’m told, but I keep having a problem accepting the neglect.

Arguably, photography can play a role in filling that gap, but to a point. As much as we would like to describe photography as story-telling, the inherent limitations of those frozen moments sometimes make for better portals than history. Rarely do photos tell you about the events that led to that frozen millisecond, or what came after. In some respect, that’s understandable in a world in constant fluidity. Whatever the case, the before and after create vacuums of their own which only our imagination can fill in most circumstances. An object on the street was placed there by someone, but what sort of person would do that? A woman stares at a man descending an escalator, but what must she be thinking? On and on those visual gaps demand to be filled, and on and on we oblige with our imaginations.

That is why we, and I do mean all of us, are proverbial story tellers. We never stop filling in the blanks, faithfully accompanied by our imaginations. We are tireless messengers of life’s narratives, choreographers of the most intricate amalgamations of fact and fiction. Those intractable unknowns lurking in those vacuums leave us no choice. And say what you may, this unconscious byproduct of our less-than-perfect humanity makes for some wonderful stories.

So go on and tell us a story. Add the drama, or the reasons why, make it rain if you have to, tell us about love, about sorrow, and all the facts and feelings in between. What color was it? It doesn’t matter. What did she mean, where did he go? How long was a long time ago? Tell us what moved you, about regrets and tears, about joy and happiness, for we want to know it all. But whatever you do, don’t ever hold back from telling us a story, for we want to hear it. No, more than that, we need to hear it, for in its absence, we will only discover that we have lost all our humanity. And that would be the worst story of them all.