Bad trouble over the weekend, Steep Ravine, California after 1964

Dorothea Lange made this photograph, “Bad Trouble Over The Weekend, Steep Ravine, California,” and it’s all about feeling, isn't it? It's like life drawing with light, and the feeling comes right through the way the tones and textures interact. The photograph shows a close-up of hands clasped tightly together, with a cigarette perched precariously between the fingers. Those hands, they’re telling a story. You can almost feel the worry etched into the skin, the way they’re intertwined, like a knot of anxiety. And the cigarette, with its fragile ash, seems to mirror the precariousness of the moment. The light is so good here, it dances across the knuckles and highlights the lines of worry. It's like the picture is saying that even in trouble, there's beauty to be found. Think of the way that Nan Goldin makes photographs, intimate and unflinching. Lange is speaking the same language of truth-telling. It's a reminder that art, at its best, holds space for the messy, complicated realities of being human.