Bullet #6 2014

Lalla Essaydi made this photograph, Bullet #6, with a camera and all the stuff around it in the frame is part of what she makes happen. The way the women blend into the background is an absolute feat of human making! I'm thinking about the artist, Lalla, and what she might have been thinking when she made this. I can imagine her seeing the way the light fell on the models, almost dissolving their forms into the space. It's like she's questioning the nature of visibility itself. That surface, though—the shimmering, beaded texture that makes up the backdrop and the garments—is a real mind-bender. It’s almost like the whole composition is made up of tiny marks, a field of abstract expressionist gestures. This makes me think of the old masters, like Matisse or Bonnard, who were also trying to capture the ephemeral nature of light and color. Essaydi invites us to look again, to see beyond the surface, to see what painting and photography can do.