Transparency is the other side of Dialogue. This picture has a story of transparency at first and of dialogue afterwards.

It was on the Karakoram Highway, somewhere near Chilas, only a few hours away from Gilgit. With some friends we were driving south towards Islamabad when we stopped for a break.

It was very early in the morning and I was sitting on a rock looking around me.

It was very silent. Only the Hindus - running down at its winter pace - broke the stillness of the sunrise. But it was a perfect harmony: the bareness of the mountains, the emptiness of the space; the deserted highway, the shadows of some clouds over mountains and hills.

And then these shepherds with their cattle came into the picture.I pretended I didn’t exist and stayed still on the rock, fascinated by their silent move.They pretended I didn’t exist too, staring at the animals, the highway, the mountains all around.

We didn’t meet; we didn’t share that moment of proximity. For some frozen time we were transparent to each other. Irrelevant it seemed.

And yet eventually curiosity broke the spell and so the eldest man turned his head and stared at me, including me into his own landscape.

I looked at him in return and - as he kept on looking attentively at me - I slowly took the picture.

Transparency had ended, turning into a mute dialogue of reciprocate acceptance and respect.

Now, I had included him into my own landscape and memory.