I found this photo on Google Maps while searching in Key West, Florida. I find it to be an interesting scene due to the inability to know what is really happening. Is the man stretching? Is he reaching to pick something up? Or has the Google car actually captured a man at one of the worst times, tripping and falling off a ledge. All scenarios could be true because there is not enough evidence to prove one over the other.
There is something about a photograph that makes it mysterious and creates the ability for there to be alternate explanations for what is happening in the picture. Even though this photograph recreates the scene exactly like it happened, we still do not know for sure what is going on. This is where I think Walter Benjamin states it best in his article “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” when he says, “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be” (page 3). If we were actually standing at this place where this picture was taken and we had the ability to watch what was happening there would only be one scenario we could imagine. But since this is just one single frame of existence stripped away from all the surrounding context, there are now many stories one can come up with because there is no way to truly know the truth from a single picture.