He Photographed That

 Here, Ondaatje describes one of Belloq's photos, displaying his skill as a photographer and the sorrow of the prostitute who is his subject:

"What you see in his pictures is her mind jumping that far back to when she would dare imagine the future, parading with love or money on a beautiful anonymous cloth arm. Remembering all that as she is photographed by the cripple who is hardly taller than his camera stand. Then he paid her, packed, and she had lost her grace. The picture is just a figure against a wall." (50)

This poetic passage describes the way Belloq captures his photos to make them so interesting. Here, in the first sentence, he is able to create a situation where the prostitute remembers all that she had wanted to be and everything that she could have been in her life. She compares that to now, being the subject of a photograph for a poor cripple and doing things she had never imagined for money. When it is over she feels no value, nor importance. As is stated in the last sentence, the picture had become simply "a figure against a wall".