At six, the Mercado da Ribeira belongs to the sellers and the light. The first hour of trade happens in a soft grey-blue, before the sun clears the rooftops and turns the fish stalls to brass. The buyers arrive in their own time; the photograph waits for none of them. I have been coming to this market for three years, and I still cannot decide whether it photographs best in the first fifteen minutes — when the crates are still stacked like a still life — or the last, when the empty stalls look like a theatre after the play. What the market taught me is that morning light is a perishable good. It cannot be stored, only attended.

Before the tourists, before the sun clears the rooftops, the market sets its own table.

This story appears in No. 07 of Plate Note, from the field section.