William Miller and Family, Twentieth-Anniversary Party, Martins Creek, Pennsylvania 1978

Larry Fink captured this photograph, William Miller and Family, Twentieth-Anniversary Party, Martins Creek, Pennsylvania, using a camera, lens, and darkroom magic. The high contrast in Fink's images, the way the blacks pull you in and the whites push you away, it's all part of a process. Look at the woman in the foreground, her floral dress almost blending with the patterned sofa, a sea of repeated shapes and textures. And then there's the young couple above, framed in a doorway, a totally staged moment but also candid. It's like he's showing us how families arrange themselves, in little groupings and private corners, capturing these odd interactions between family members with real tenderness. There's a little bit of Diane Arbus in his work, but softer, more forgiving. It reminds us that art is just a conversation, that artists are always looking and borrowing, responding to each other across time. These photographs, they’re not about answers, they're about feeling, suggesting, and embracing the messy ambiguity of life itself.