Carroll Street, Brooklyn, New York 1968

This is a photograph by David Vestal, entitled 'Carroll Street, Brooklyn, New York'. It seems the artist is interested in the quiet process of seeing. There's a beautiful range of grays. The whole image is a surface that seems to breathe, expanding and contracting through light. It's very subtle, but if you look closely, you can see the slight imperfections and variations in the paint on the door. They give the image a tactile quality, like you could reach out and feel the texture of the surface. In the lower left-hand corner there's a door knob. See how the tones there are slightly darker, creating a sense of depth and shadow? This is interesting to me. It speaks to the way light interacts with objects, creating dimension and volume. It reminds me a little of some of the domestic interiors of Vilhelm Hammershøi. But unlike Hammershøi, Vestal seems interested in the everyday, the incidental. Art is an ongoing conversation, constantly evolving and reshaping our understanding of the world.