PHOTOGRAPHY AS WITNESS - Presence and Care

Photography, at its most meaningful, is not an act of taking. It is an act of being present.

From the beginning, Light & Paper has been shaped by this belief: that images gain depth when they are made with attention, patience, respect and care. That

photography, when practiced as a form of witness, asks not for speed or spectacle, but for time; time to look, to listen, and to understand what stands in front of the lens.

This last issue of this year returns to that idea deliberately. Not as a theory, but as a lived practice.

Earlier this year, one photographer reached a moment that quietly embodied this way of working. After more than three decades of moving through the world with a camera, Rodrigo Rangel de Alba visited every one of its 197 countries. The journey did not conclude with a statement, but with reflection. The significance was not in

the distance covered, but in the presence sustained.

Photography, in its truest form, is not about coverage or completion. It is about showing up, again and again, without ownership, without urgency, and without the need

to explain everything it sees. It is a way of moving through the world that values presence over conclusion, and care over control.

As we close the year, we reflect on photography as a long view rather than a single moment. On images shaped by experience rather than ambition. On the quiet discipline of witnessing a world that is complex, beautiful, fractured, and deeply human.

Between Departures is written for Rodrigo Rangel de Alba, and for every photographer who, through patience and presence, helps us see the world as one, without borders,

and with a deeper sense of what it means to be human.