A city detail, a hotel interior, an ordinary person, a tree: Teju Cole began to look at and represent reality differently after a period of partial blindness, which led him to a series of reflections on seeing. These are some of the subjects of his pictures, snapshots on which he builds each time a reflection, a memory or a short story. Here he entrusts his meditation on memory and looking to the images he makes every day, each accompanied by a brief poetic text. Though it has clear links to John Berger, Chris Marker and W. G. Sebald, it is something different: an original and brave work combining his poetic landscape photography with his lyrical, allusive, committed prose. "When the shutter closes, the world stops in a frame. Words too are fixed by writing. Yet images and words are inert until they are seen and read" (Siri Hustvedt). "A street is not only the asphalt surface, the buildings, the cars, the people around you. It is also the way all those things relate. A second before, it has not happened yet. A second later, it is gone for ever" (Teju Cole).