There's a photograph I know that shows a kid's bicycle lying on its side, one wheel turned upright, a smear of blood tracing its path on the concrete. There's a little package still latched to the back, waiting for its owner to return. You can see where the bike swerved, then lost its way. Someone's been hurt. Or worse. The blood is still damp, the trail fresh. Whose blood was it? A child's, I imagine — from an accident? A shooting? The photo was taken by Annie Leibovitz during a war in Yugoslavia. It's called Bloody Bicycle (Sarajevo, 1993), and the picture doesn't just invite you, it compels you, forces you to ask, " What just happened? " The thing that gets me about this picture is its grip. Annie Leibovitz finds exactly the right framing, the right angle, the right distance to tell me some — but not all — of what I want to know. The bicycle, the blood, the ground, what I see, what I can't see, makes me imagine a story. I have to imagine because, while there are clues in plain view,
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