I thought I was just taking a photo through a barber shop windows – barber shops are one of my favorite businesses to photograph. I made the image. I went on with my day, which in this case included a late-afternoon flight to Rome and then on to Sicily. When I made the photo, I thought the main thing was that US flag draped on the back of the chair. It seemed so simple, a thing that’s done at the end of every barbering day. It’s the kind of story-telling details I look for.

So the weird thing is that a month later when I edited this image, I noticed the Sicilian and Italians flags on the wall and a couple of other Sicilian things on the wall. They were there all along, of course, but it took my journey to realize what I had already seen.

Travel’s like that: it’ll open your eyes in ways you can’t anticipate.

Boston, Massachusetts
photographed 8.28.2022