Gene Smith's Stairs, 821 6th Avenue, New York 1965

David Vestal made this photograph of Gene Smith's Stairs at 821 6th Avenue in New York. It’s a study in monochrome, where shades of gray map out not just forms, but also feelings. You know? I am drawn to the grimy texture, the way the light catches the uneven surfaces of the wall, the stairs and the strange, almost comical graffiti. Look at how the handrail slices through the frame, dividing the chaos of the wall from the ordered ascent of the steps. It's like a visual fulcrum, balancing two different kinds of experience, between order and disorder, upward progress and urban decay. Vestal has a knack for finding beauty in the mundane, and, like his contemporary, Robert Frank, he gives us a new way of seeing that shifts our understanding of photographic truth away from the documentary and towards a more poetic, emotional register. It makes you think about what other hidden wonders might be hiding in plain sight.