A rainy Sunday afternoon found Yen (74) sitting outside a bar in Copenhagen enjoying a cold beer and a cigarette. I approached him and asked if he would be interested in me taking his portrait. He obliged and we began chatting about his life. He was born just outside of Copenhagen and has lived in the city for most of his adult life. When I asked what his greatest wish was… he just chuckled and said “to be in the front row of a Bruce Springsteen concert.”
This assignment proved to be more challenging than I anticipated. When I first started asking strangers to take their portrait, I hadn’t refined the phrasing of my question. After many awkward rejections, I discussed it with a classmate and changed the way I was asking people. Yen was the first person I approached after changing the phrasing of the way I asked and he immediately agreed to be photographed. I chose Yen because he looked incredibly kind and I was curious to know more about him. My favorite of these two pictures is the second one because I feel like it is the truest to his essence. It portrays Yen exactly as I found him and was taken as he was telling me about his greatest wish.
