New York 1987

Curator: Before us we have Rosalind Solomon's 1987 gelatin-silver print entitled "New York," a captivating work from her street photography series. Editor: My first impression is one of understated masculinity, even a slight awkwardness. The man seems posed yet unaware, almost trapped within the frame of a very suburban mundanity. Curator: Solomon often focused on the intersection of the personal and the political. Consider the time this photograph was taken. The AIDS crisis loomed large, Reaganomics transformed urban landscapes. How does this portrait engage with or challenge those power structures? Editor: The domestic symbols are what immediately speak to me. The quaint white door askew, the manicured bushes… they're such potent visual signifiers of stability and perhaps even conformity, violently disrupted in those days by the reality of the HIV virus which turned accepted norms and identities on their heads. Curator: Exactly! Think of the work of artists like Felix Gonzalez-Torres at this time and his focus on similar themes. Solomon isn't simply capturing an individual; she's engaging with the collective anxieties and societal shifts occurring in 1980s America. What narratives are embedded in those everyday images? How do these details either confirm our assumptions, or expose latent contradictions? Editor: This makes me consider how gender roles of that time and its anxieties regarding identity are represented by the work as a whole. The subject's nonchalant pose seems deliberately ambiguous when placed within this intensely cultivated space, making him both present and also out of place. This portrait serves as more than mere documentation; it serves as visual metaphor. Curator: Yes! It is as though his self-assured, "average" male image, ironically captured here as black-and-white gelatin print, aims toward objectivity, while failing spectacularly to escape a complex social web of identity. He's a man captured, not as the powerful urban hero he envisions, but frozen in time with that skewed angle. Editor: A moment of reflection on how seemingly "stable" representations are often reflections of societal instability. I now recognize an underlying symbolism in how Solomon juxtaposes person against this disquieting environment to great emotional impact. Curator: Solomon has done that well here! The impact of social issues that surrounded the era now is much better seen. Editor: Indeed! It is a work to revisit and consider deeply.