Photography to say the least, is a passion of mine. I travel, I eat and I photograph and that’s about it. The images that grace the pages of National Geographic are some of my all time favorites. The photographs capture a moment and a life bringing to the viewer a glimpse of another world. Aware of my love of National Geographic photography and coffee table books my dad bought me Work: The World in Photographs, a National Geographic collection of images.

As I was flipping through the pages, much to my surprise, I found an image of a man I myself had taken an almost identical image of. The photograph by Anne Keiser predated mine by almost 20 years. Though the surrounding market had developed, the bagel seller of Suq ez Zeit in the Arab Quarter of Old Jerusalem had not changed much. Nothing more than a few cosmetic changes here and there but the man was essentially the same- down to the pen in his left chest pocket.

Anne Keiser's version of the Bored Bagel Seller, 1985

and mine

Many people give the credit of a photograph to the photographer themselves; most assume that it is the photographer that successfully captures the moment. Maybe instead, credit should be given to the substance of the shot. For it is the subject itself that somehow embodies the moment and life we strive to immortalize and urges others to capture it.