Refocus 1
A father took this photograph on what would become one of the most ordinary—and most important—days in a boy’s life.
At first glance, this is simply a photograph of a little boy getting his first haircut. But photographs are rarely simple. The more you look, the more they begin to speak.
Your eye is naturally drawn to the little boy sitting in the barber’s chair. Then it begins to wander. You notice the barber’s face reflected in the mirror. The old cash register with a 25¢ sign. The barber’s license hanging on the wall. The bottle of hair tonic. The comb resting in his hand. The freshly clipped blond hair scattered across the cape.
You might even notice that the reflection doesn’t quite match the angle of the boy’s face, suggesting the photographer was shooting slightly upward. Small details begin to emerge—the barber’s worn watch, the wedding ring on his weathered hand.
Then something interesting happens. Your imagination fills in the rest. You can almost hear the steady hum of the clippers... the ding of the cash register... maybe an old AM radio quietly playing songs from the 1950s. One might assume this is an old photograph because of what’s inside the frame and because it’s black and white. In this case, you’d be right.
The little boy seems calm. Not afraid. That would make sense. That little boy is me. This is my favorite photograph of myself as a child. And the man behind the camera was my father. I was about three years old, getting my first haircut. Neither of us knew that five years later he would be gone. Today would have been his 85th birthday. It felt like the right day to begin this journey.
As photographers, we’re trained to notice light, composition, timing, and expression. But time has taught me something even more important. Photographs don’t just preserve what happened. They preserve what matters. This picture isn’t valuable because it’s technically perfect. It’s valuable because it became something I could never recreate.
A memory. A moment. A father and son together.
Growing up, I never imagined how grateful I would one day be that he pressed the shutter. Today, I understand just how rare this photograph really is. It’s my first haircut. It’s one of the earliest milestones of my life. But even more than that... it’s one of the few gifts my father left me without ever knowing he was giving it.
His camera eventually became my teacher and the birth of my passion. When I was about fourteen years old, I picked it up. I never really put it down again. Photography became my profession, taking me around the world for more than three decades. But somewhere along the way I realized I wasn’t really chasing perfect light or perfect composition. I was chasing stories. The ones hidden beneath the surface. The ones most people walk right past.
That’s why I started writing Refocus.
Because every photograph has a story behind it. Sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes it’s heartbreaking. Sometimes it changes the way we see our own lives. This photograph changed mine.
I didn’t know it then, but that single photograph would begin a lifetime of looking for something much deeper than a smile.
I call it Eyedenity.
Because every photograph has two stories.
The one you see...
...and the one you discover when you really look.
Next time in Refocus... another photograph, another story waiting to be discovered.
RE