"Can You Hear Me?" - A Call Across Time

Photo Essay, Portraiture, Portrait Photography, Narrative, Fine Art Photography, Leica SL3, Urban Photography

Surreal shadows stretch across the wall, swallowing the space between two men separated by eras, but bound by an invisible thread—communication. One clutches a thick, clunky telephone from the 1970s, the coiled cord tethering him to an age long past. His expression is strained, as if his words have been buried under decades of silence. He speaks in halting whispers, his voice cracked with urgency, desperation, and fear of what might be on the other side.

Across time a man in contemporary security garb stands rigid, impassive. A slick, wireless earpiece connects him to the unseen voice, an ethereal sound creeping into his consciousness. His face betrays no emotion, but his eyes shift uneasily as if recognizing a disturbance, an unsettling echo of something that shouldn't exist anymore. The world around him moves on, fast, sterile, indifferent. He, however, is rooted in place—caught between the present and the ghostly echoes of the past.

The air grows thick with tension, as though time itself is fraying, twisting into knots around them. The man on the bakerlite phone speaks words that the guard can barely understand, their meanings distorted through the decades, yet laden with an ominous weight. There is something in what is said that transcends time: a warning, a plea, perhaps a confession. But it is too late. The line, both literal and figurative, is fraying.

What happens when the past calls, demanding to be heard? And what happens when the present can no longer look away from its forgotten ghosts?

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All images are copyright Rand Leeb-du Toit, 2024.