This is a picture I did not take

of a barber reaching through the horizontal window blinds of his shop in Atlanta, a few miles from the barbershop Walker Evans photographed in 1936 but similarly well-loved and worn, the barber's hand reaching through the blinds to remove a sun-faded window sign supporting Senator Obama, who was still a Senator in 2008 when the sign was printed and proudly posted in the shop's window, and Obama's campaign staff had been prescient enough to include specific outreach to barbershops in Atlanta, knowing the significance of these institutions within the African-American community, and back then, in 2008, I'd accompanied optimistic, bright-eyed campaign volunteers to barbershops in the city to photograph the distribution of posters and literature supporting Obama -- and here we are again, three years later, a sun-faded and curled sign being removed from the sill by the barber's slim fingers as I look on, not photographing.