There is a photograph in my archive that I return to often. A couple on a city sidewalk, mid-kiss, oblivious to the crowd moving around them and entirely unaware of the lens pointed in their direction. The image is slightly soft — motion blur, ambient light, the natural disorder of a busy street — and that imperfection is part of what makes it work. It has the feel of something caught rather than constructed.

Pick up a camera and walk a European city for an afternoon. Not a tourist circuit — just walk. Find a market square in the middle of the week, a café terrace at eleven in the morning, a boulevard at the hour when school lets out. Pay attention to what the camera wants. What it wants, almost immediately, is people in shared space doing nothing in particular. Not performing, not consuming, not commuting.