The Hollywood Suites (Windows) #22 1977

Steve Kahn made this photograph, The Hollywood Suites (Windows) #22, using gelatin silver. It's about a way of seeing, of course, of framing. The graininess of the image, it's like a million tiny dots holding the picture together, gives everything this fuzzy, dreamlike quality. It reminds me that photographs aren't just copies of reality, they're built, like paintings, from the ground up. That curtain seems to hang like a painting within the frame of the window, doesn't it? Look at the lower left corner, where the curtain bunches on the sill, so casual and quiet. You could almost miss it, but it's these subtle moments that make the piece, for me. It's like Bernd and Hilla Becher's typologies of industrial structures or some of Ed Ruscha's serial books, but with a softer, more intimate touch. It's about repetition and difference, but also about feeling, about the elusive beauty of the everyday.