It was a hot summer week , and the Wiese had dropped to something closer to a stream than a river. I was walking sections near Lange Erlen and Riehen, Switzerland, with camera ,when it struck me that the water itself seemed to be suffering, not as a figure of speech but as something I could see, in the low flow, the exposed gravel, the way the light sat too heavily on what was left of the current. I kept photographing anyway, and it was only later, back at the screen, that I understood what I had been trying to show.