Photo Psychology – An Unexpected Turn

It was a cold winter.

There were barely any people on the streets.

Honestly, I had no desire to leave my warm apartment and go to the meeting we had arranged.

I had a bad feeling about it.

I began inventing excuses for cancelling.

Within seconds, my mind produced a whole catalogue of plausible reasons.

Then I forced myself to go.

I could not cancel.

She had trusted me and chosen me.

Even if I did not feel that we would be compatible, I had to walk through the process properly.

The strange thing was that I did not even know who she was.

We had exchanged only a very short series of messages.

Still, I had the feeling that this meeting would hurt emotionally.

It had been such a good day until then.

Why did I always do this to myself?

I became so absorbed in those thoughts that suddenly I realised I had already arrived.

I stood outside in freezing temperatures and did not dare go in.

I wondered what she might look like.

Whether my intuition about the meeting was right.

And what if I was completely wrong?

I opened the door.

After a few steps, I stopped.

I looked around.

My eyes met those of an elegant middle-aged woman.

Could that be her?

She sat extremely upright, with a presence that immediately commanded respect.

Yet when I looked more carefully, I could see sadness in her eyes.

She seemed very different from the personality I had imagined from the messages — gentler, more humble.

I took several more steps.

Looked back at her.

She was watching me with interest too.

But she did not stand up or make any gesture suggesting she was waiting for me.

She was alone at the table.

I sat in the opposite corner of the café beside the window and waited.

The waiter came.

I ordered hot tea.

The woman began scrolling through her phone.

There were almost no customers inside.

I started wondering whether it was even worth opening a business in weather like this, with barely anybody outside.

Then snow began to fall.

I stared through the window and disappeared into pointless thoughts.

Suddenly somebody spoke to me from behind.

I looked up.

A young man of around thirty stood above me.

His face looked tense.

There was an enormous amount of pain visible in his eyes.

For a moment, I looked away.

I did not want to absorb what he was feeling.

The unexpected situation made me uncomfortable.

Who was he?

What did he want?

As far as I knew, my client was a woman.

So surely this man only wanted to ask something.

I tried not to show my confusion, although hiding emotions has never been one of my strongest skills.

I could feel the shock on my face when he sat opposite me and immediately began talking.

At first I could barely focus.

I could see his mouth moving and his hands gesturing quickly, but I did not really hear him.

Still, he seemed kind.

Gradually, I returned to the present.

My strength came back.

“I'm sorry. Can I help you?” I asked.

The man casually wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead.

“Three years ago I was in a car accident,” he said, now moving his hands more slowly. “My parents were in the car with me. My father did not survive. Both of my mother's legs had to be amputated. I escaped with several fractures.”

He spoke with such openness and honesty that images and feelings immediately came alive in front of me.

And the moment I truly began listening, another instinct appeared:

I wanted to shut it out.

I wanted to escape the conversation.

I do not like hearing stories like this.

My own inner world is complicated enough.

But it is mostly built around happiness and love.

I did not want this kind of energy.

And yet there was nothing I could do.

There was no escape from the situation.

Either I would collapse under the emotion or I could try to listen as an outside observer, almost as though watching a film.

I chose the second.

I tried to understand what he wanted to tell me.

Why we were sitting there.

I took a deep breath almost without noticing and shut everything else out.

Then I simply listened.

The atmosphere between us became warmer and more intimate almost immediately.

He talked and talked.

Behind every sentence was a depth of pain I would not wish on an enemy.

I still had no idea what any of this had to do with me.

I was a photographer who had supposedly come to meet a future client and discuss ideas for a photo shoot.

Then he said one sentence.

And suddenly everything made sense.

“I only told you all of this because I thought it was important for you to understand what came before. The worst thing is… I was driving.”

I stared at him in stunned silence.

A large tear rolled down his face.

He wiped his eyes.

Looked at me sadly.

Then stood up.

He wiped his face again and began walking toward the other side of the café.

Straight toward the woman who was still sitting there.

Only then did I notice:

The woman was in a wheelchair.

And suddenly I understood.

She was my actual client.

Part of the BANHALMI ecosystem

For the professional context and practical side of portrait photography, visit the BANHALMI professional website. Related art series, books and exhibitions are preserved in the BANHALMI ART archive.