Street Map (#10) Possibly 1989 - 1994

Jim Goldberg made this photograph, Street Map (#10), and like a lot of street photography, it feels immediate, as if it were grabbed right out of life, which in a way it was, but not really. Goldberg's photo documents what looks like a city park, and the first thing I see is this defunct payphone covered in graffiti, a palimpsest of lost connections. Look at the surface of the phone itself: the grime, the scratches, the desperate messages etched into the metal. It's all texture, all history, telling a story of disuse. In the background, people mill about, seemingly oblivious, or maybe just used to the backdrop. This piece reminds me a little of Robert Frank’s "The Americans," not in subject matter, but in the way it captures a certain gritty, lived-in quality of urban life. Like Frank, Goldberg isn't afraid to show the rough edges, the parts of the city we often try to ignore. It's not a pretty picture, but it's a real one. And I think that's what makes it compelling.