I don’t remember exactly why I wasn’t in the gun that day. I was sitting behind the driver’s seat, camera in hand, when this moment passed by just a few kids in a car looking back at me through the glass. Revisiting the image now, I’m drawn less to what I captured and more to what I didn’t understand at the time. Their expressions sit somewhere between curiosity and caution, and I can’t help but wonder what we looked like to them—not as soldiers to each other, but as something unfamiliar moving through their day.

What stayed with me most isn’t the photograph itself, but what came after. The conversations they might have had at home. The questions they asked. Whether anyone had answers. We saw each other for only a moment, but it felt like there was a distance far greater than the glass between us. Looking back, this image doesn’t give me clarity it just leaves me with the same question I’ve carried since: what did we look like through their eyes?