Dave and Echo, Hollywood Alley 1989

Jim Goldberg made this photo in Hollywood Alley, and it looks like the encounter wasn’t planned. It looks like Dave and Echo have bumped into a wall in this narrow passage, and that wall is kind of their support. I can imagine what Goldberg, the photographer, might have been thinking as he composed this image. It is stark but intimate, with no room to move around, for the photographer or the subjects. The darks are really dark here, while the wall is lighter, and the tonal range is narrow. It is almost like he found them by chance, or they found each other by chance, stuck in the alleyway between buildings. Dave is kind of upright, but Echo is all crumpled, like an echo. I wonder what they were thinking, and what Goldberg was thinking, and how they ended up together in the middle of the night. It is clear that artists are in an ongoing conversation and exchange of ideas across time. We can't fix this moment, or give it one interpretation. I wonder what you think it means.