Bruce Weber American, b. 29/3/1946

A man stands on the sand with both arms straight up, fingers spread, watching a boy who is airborne above him, arms and legs extended, mid-flight and unafraid. Behind them a forested headland rises steeply into a pale sky. Farther down the beach, small under the hill, other people sit with a striped umbrella and a few beach chairs. The man's back is to us; his face is turned up, mouth open with effort.

This was made at Prainha in 1986. Rickson Gracie is throwing his son Rawkson into the air, and the picture holds the exact instant before the catch, which means the whole photograph is a promise the image cannot keep. We supply the ending. Everyone who looks at this assumes the boy comes down safely, and we assume it because of the way the father's hands are already waiting.

I think about who gets photographed like this and where. A Brazilian family at play, seen by an American photographer, on a beach that in other pictures of that decade would have been shorthand for something more exotic. What saves it is the specificity: this father, this son, this ordinary game repeated until it is boring for them and astonishing for us. The exotic dissolves on contact with detail. That is usually how it goes.