[Versión en Español acá] Less than a minute ago, that man had a gun to his head. His anguished face is that of someone who knew that was about to die. Kneeling him to the ground, a suit-and-tie pedestrian put a gun to his head and, looking quickly left and right searching for witnesses, his finger on the trigger, he was one step away from shooting him.
All of this happens in broad daylight, people coming and going on a typical weekday in downtown Guatemala City. It’s 1995, I had just arrived in the country and back then I always went out with my photographic equipment (Canon T90 that years later would be stolen in Mexico City, old 300mm f4 lens). I was walking with a journalist friend when we saw an alleged thief being detained on the opposite sidewalk. I opened my bag, took the camera and as I was attaching the telephoto I saw how the man had a gun against the head, his captor’s body rigid in the gesture of someone about to shoot. Maybe he didn’t do it because he saw me taking out the camera, or perhaps it was the number of pedestrians circulating on the street at that hour or he simply he didn’t want to get blood on his suit. The fact is that he did not shoot, and the young man was able to escape, but not before receiving some kicks from a group that was witnessing the incident. They didn’t hit him too much; it seems to me that his attackers understood that he had already had too much.
I knew that I could not offer the story to any editor because I did not have the defining photo of the moment: the gun to the head. Without that, the series of photos had no chance. All this I am saying might sound cold, but that’s how photojournalism sometimes is, especially in poor countries where the news stereotype are violence.
I kept the negatives without ever seeing then again, but through the years having flashbacks to that moment. Thus, these photos continued their slow maturation process in my memories until I understood that in that sequence I had managed to capture something important: the face of a person who knew he was about to die. What did this young man think when he felt the revolver against his head? What did he look at (a cloud, a bird, the bark of a tree, the shoes of his executioner) thinking: “this is the last time”?
