Text: Julie Schwietert Collazo
Photo: Francisco Collazo
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The Matador team launched its online travel photography course last week and already students are enrolling and working on their first assignment, one component of which is to introduce themselves and talk about why they’re interested in photography.

One student mentioned that he’s interested in the stories that photos can tell, especially stories about the environment, about marginalized people, and overlooked corners of our world.

I agree that photos can convey urgency, feeling, and acuity that words may lack.

Sometimes, though, photos only start to hint at a story, and without any context at all, you’re only left with questions that rattle around in your brain, unanswered.

Francisco shot this photo in the subway station at Union Square yesterday. I didn’t ask him anything at all about it, but I had a hundred questions. Who is she? Where is she from? What does she think as she pulls on her black mariachi pants, the ones with the silver adornments sewn down the side? How did her group come together? How much money do they make? How does she feel when people stop to take in the whole scene? Or when they walk by, pretending not to notice or trying to block out the sound? What is she feeling at this exact moment?

You can see more photos of the mariachi–and of other interesting New Yorkers– in our New York People set on Flickr.