Ted Botha

A New Yorker comes to terms with his place alongside more famous landmarks in strangers' snapshots.

Imagine the home of people you don't know. You haven't a clue where they live, don't speak their language and quite possibly have never heard of their home country, let alone their hometown. They've invited friends over for the evening, during which they will regale them with stories of their recent trip to Walt Disney World, Los Angeles and New York. At some point, of course, the photos will come out or the slide show will suddenly materialize. And there, between the shots of the Empire State Building, Animal Kingdom and people bustling down Fifth Avenue, is one of someone you would probably recognize. That's because that someone is you.

I sometimes imagine scenes like that because I repeatedly find myself becoming a subject in foreigners' photographs without having been asked to be there. It's not that I'm famous, and it's not that I'm more photogenic than the next person either. But in a city that gets as many tourists as New York does, it just happens.

I'll be walking home, which takes me past the Guggenheim or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and my course will unavoidably end up leading between someone holding a camera and someone having a photograph taken. I'll duck or swerve out of the way, which sometimes works, but just as often doesn't. Click! Suddenly, at the push of a button, I'm captured in the frame.

When the photographer gets home, he or she could quite as easily throw me away ("Hey, remember that idiot who got in the way just as I was taking your picture?") as keep me. ("That guy crossing in front of you adds a je ne sais quoi of New York, don't you think? Someone harried on his way somewhere unimportant.") And so I get forever stuck, midstride, in a stranger's album in Paris or Tokyo without even knowing it.

I too have plenty of photos like that. I once counted how many people were in my own albums who didn't need to be there - that is, people who didn't add the kind of local color that, say, a snaggle-toothed woman in the fish market of San Sebastián or the rickshaw driver in Ho Chi Minh City would, people who could be you or me, people who were, quite probably, other tourists. (You know, the kind who come up to you after your shutter has clicked and say, "Oh, did you get us in your photograph? I'd love it if you sent me and Bob a copy. Here's out address in Wichita.")

It was only after several friends looking at my albums asked "Who is that?" that I stopped answering, "Just someone I couldn't ask to move out of the way before I got the picture of the Eiffel Tower I really wanted," and started wondering, "Who is that?" Who is that man with the gray hair and the dazed look sitting on the bench in the shadows of the Jardin du Luxembourg? Who is that woman fussing with her bag to the side of the temple in Nikko? And who is that young couple in DKNY T-shirts sitting a little bit too far from each other at the caffé in Rome?

Soon I started figuring out histories for them. The man is Reggie Dwyer from Idaho, who got tired of trudging around Paris and has gone for an early morning walk to escape the tour group, and his wife Edith, who keeps wanting to explore every boutique and cul-de-sac. The old lady is from Brussels and has just realized that she left her return ticket to Tokyo on the train and she won't be able to get back. The couple is on their honeymoon, and they've had a fight about whether to go to the Spanish Steps or that cheap CD place he's heard about near the Villa Borghese.

The strangers eventually become more than just faces. Every time you look at your photo of the Tower of Pisa or the ruins at Angkor, you can't help seeing what's around the landmark. So the faces become as familiar as the places. I won't ever go to the Jardin du Luxembourg again without associating it with Reggie Dwyer from Idaho - or whoever he was.

Harder to explain than what I call the Accidental Tourist Photograph - the one where a totally undesired subject stumbles into a stranger's viewfinder - is the intentional one. That means the stranger actually wants you to stumble into the frame. The first time this happened to me, I was Rollberblading in Central Park and noticed a Japanese couple in the distance pointing a camera in my direction. Initially I thought they wanted a general shot - you know, one to which they could later add the description "Bladers in Central Park on a Saturday Afternoon." But they waited and waited, poised as still as statues, and just as I passed them I heard the camera go off. Click!

Two things went through my mind right then - besides trying not to fall over as I looked back at them. The first was a recollection of the veilled Muslim women in Mombasa who'd gotten angry when I tried to photograph them, and the vendors in the marketplaces of Abidjan and Bangkok who'd demanded a fee for the privilege of being included in my mementos. I suddenly got their point.

Never mind the embarrassment of knowing that somewhere down the line, someone is going to sit perusing your image, making studied comments about your teeth, hair and bad blading form. I felt as if a part of me had been taken away - if not my soul, then maybe my physical copyright, if there is such a thing. But then I also remembered that when I was in Mombasa, Bangkok and Abidjan, on the other side of the camera, I had thought that if it had been me being photographed, I never would have made such a fuss. My bluff was being called - or, rather, snapped.

The second thing that went through my mind was bafflement. Why me? I had never thought of myself as postcard-worthy. If I were taking away an image to remember New York by, a photo of me would be the last thing I'd take. I don't rank up there with the snaggle-toothed fisherwoman or the rickshaw driver or the veiled Muslim woman. But then again, who does? Who typifies New York? The hot-dog vendor? The lady in mink on Madison Avenue? The taxi driver? If it had to be a blader in Central Park, why not me?

I might not think of myself as the quintessential New Yorker, but that's not to say strangers don't. And who am I to begrudge someone who chooses to equate me with the Statue of Liberty and the Chrysler Building? So from that moment on, I decided not to question the next camera that gets shoved in my face. Instead I'll be ready for my close-up.