This picture struck me as I was looking around google maps. I found the ambulence, and I began following it, curious as to where it was going. Eventually I came across this scene, a scene with multiple facetes that I couldn’t analyses them immediatly. As Walter Benjamin said “This constitutes the shock effect of the film, which, like all shocks, should be cushioned by heightened presence of mind.” Pictures and films have a unique ability to give you an almost unfiltered view of an instance. This picture takes place in Chile, in what is quite possibly a dangerous part of town. The photograph is taken from a place where there is no feasible way for me to get the picture, and yet there it is.
Photography is pure, this is a pure view of this place, of these people. But while it’s a pure view, it’s only of an instance. We have no way of knowing if the ambulance was in a rush to help someone that was injured, or what the story of the family on the left is. You can almost feel the tension between the two men on the right, photography asks questions but refuses to provide answers. It’s almost maddening how a simple picture can ask so many un answerable questions.