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Contributing Writer Storytelling & Travel Writing

Tom Bretherton

Tom Bretherton has spent the better part of two decades travelling, and the better part of that time paying attention. He has contributed to Light & Composition since 2014 with a writer's instinct for the particular — the name of a town, the timing of a conversation, the kind of detail that makes a story feel true. His Reflections are brief narratives that arrive at something universal by way of somewhere very specific.

621 Published Reflections

Reflections by Tom Bretherton

Showing 12 of 621 essays
The Architecture of Memory Photo of the Day
June 13, 2015

The Architecture of Memory

I remember walking through the old quarter of a city I hadn’t visited in a decade. The streets were narrower than I recalled, the stone walls worn smooth by the friction of a thousand passing lives. I stopped to run my hand along a crumbling archway, and for a moment, the present felt thin, like […]
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The Weight of Silence Photo of the Day
June 8, 2015

The Weight of Silence

I remember sitting in a courtyard in Fez, watching the way the light retreated from the stone walls as the evening call to prayer began. There is a specific kind of silence that falls over a city when the architecture is built to hold it. It isn’t just an absence of noise; it is a […]
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The Weight of a Glance Photo of the Day
June 6, 2015

The Weight of a Glance

I remember sitting in a cafe in Istanbul, watching a boy no older than seven press his face against the glass of the window. He wasn’t begging; he was simply observing, his eyes tracing the movement of the people inside as if we were characters in a film he had been waiting his whole life […]
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The Weight of Color Photo of the Day
June 5, 2015

The Weight of Color

I remember a street market in Jaipur where the air turned thick with powdered pigment. A man selling marigolds had his entire face coated in a layer of neon pink, his eyes bright and startling against the dust. We didn’t speak the same language, but he laughed when I accidentally inhaled a cloud of yellow, […]
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The Architecture of In-Between Photo of the Day
June 1, 2015

The Architecture of In-Between

I remember sitting in a small cafe in Monterrey, watching a man paint a wall in the alleyway outside. He wasn’t painting a mural or a sign; he was simply covering a patch of peeling plaster with a shade of blue that felt entirely too bright for such a forgotten corner. I asked him why […]
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The Blur of Memory Photo of the Day
May 28, 2015

The Blur of Memory

I remember sitting in a train station in Osaka, watching the commuters blur into a single, rushing river of grey and navy. I was waiting for a friend who was perpetually ten minutes late, and in that stillness, the world around me began to lose its sharp edges. When you stop trying to identify every […]
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The Rhythm of the Road Photo of the Day
May 25, 2015

The Rhythm of the Road

I remember standing on the side of a mountain pass in the Pyrenees, waiting for a blur of color to tear through the silence. My friend Elias, who had cycled the same route a dozen times, told me that you don’t watch a race to see who wins. You watch it to witness the moment […]
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The Geometry of Joy Photo of the Day
May 18, 2015

The Geometry of Joy

I remember a dusty patch of ground behind a school in Rajasthan where the boundary line was drawn with a jagged stick and a prayer. I was ten, and the heat was a physical weight, yet we ran until our lungs burned, arguing over whether a ball had clipped the imaginary stumps. It didn’t matter […]
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The Quiet Watcher Photo of the Day
May 17, 2015

The Quiet Watcher

I remember sitting by the edge of a drainage ditch in my grandfather’s garden, waiting for the world to reveal its smaller inhabitants. My knees were stained with damp earth, and the air smelled of wet moss and impending rain. I must have been seven or eight. I spent hours watching a single patch of […]
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Stone and Silence Photo of the Day
May 14, 2015

Stone and Silence

I remember sitting on a low stone wall in a village in the high mountains, watching an old man meticulously sweep dust from a courtyard that seemed to have been clean for centuries. He didn’t look up when I walked past, but he offered a small, knowing nod. It was a quiet acknowledgement that we […]
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The Architecture of Night Photo of the Day
May 12, 2015

The Architecture of Night

I remember sitting on a pier in San Francisco with a man named Elias, who had spent forty years working the docks. He pointed toward the water, where the city lights bled into the dark, and told me that the night doesn’t hide things; it just rearranges them. He said that during the day, we […]
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The Art of Stillness Photo of the Day
May 10, 2015

The Art of Stillness

I spent three hours sitting on a limestone rock in the heat of the afternoon, waiting for a desert fox that never showed. My legs were cramping, and the dust had settled into the creases of my boots. I was ready to pack up and leave, frustrated by the silence, when I noticed a small […]
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