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Steve McCurry – Photographer
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Vietnam Gallery – Vietnam

The comely young woman in the photo has a small, wide face with angular cheekbones and a broad nose. I call her Buôn because it’s the Vietnamese word for sad. She has smooth, crease-free skin the color of raw Tupelo honey next to the pale gray of what is possibly a knock-off of a 1980s Members Only jacket. The collar sits askew and the right leaf is turned slightly upward. Her wide-set, almond-shaped eyes, so dark in color they are virtually obsidian, sit below an almost perfectly straight set of charcoal colored eyebrows and a narrow forehead. Her thin, onyx hair is pulled back into a low ponytail with a scarlet band. A few delicate strands escape the band to form an upside-down V on either side of her face, which lightly brush the pea-sized brown mole sitting inches below and forward of her right ear. Salty tears flowing from her dark eyes form perpendicular lines down her cheeks and graze her hand which seems too large in comparison to her face. That considerable hand covers what I imagine are small, plump lips only a shade or two darker than that raw honey skin - lips that are pursed tight above a square chin.

As she sits in the backseat of a car, the seatbelt not fastened, those crystal tears shimmering on her slightly rosy cheeks, I can’t help but wonder what has made her so forlorn. She has the look of one who has just left the side of her beloved mother or father who has now gone on to meet their maker.

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