The Weight of a Name

We carry our names like heavy coats, buttoned against the wind. They are the first things we are given and the last things we leave behind. But beneath the name, there is a person who has stood in the sun for a long time, watching the dust settle on the road. The face is a map of places visited and things endured. It is a quiet geography. We look at a stranger and think we see a story, but we only see the surface of a deep, dark well. There is a silence in the way a man holds his hands, a stillness that suggests he has already seen the end of the day and found it sufficient. We are all just passing through, leaving small marks on the earth that the next rain will wash away. What remains when the name is stripped back to the bone?

Ali Berrada has captured this stillness in his portrait titled Mr Everybody. He has found the man beneath the name, standing in the light of a place I have never been. Does this face look like someone you have known your entire life?