Hermosa Beach #6 1978

Tod Papageorge shot ‘Hermosa Beach #6’ using photography, sometime around the 1960s or 70s, and it's a trip how he captures these ordinary, beachy moments with such quirky, almost surreal clarity. The photo’s all about the grays, a soft but sharp black and white that makes everything feel both real and a bit like a dream. Look at the texture of the sand, each grain seems to have its own little shadow. And then there are the people, arranged kinda randomly – like a snapshot but way more composed. There's a woman standing in the center of the frame, her hands resting on her hips, her posture is a moment of confidence or defiance, or maybe both. It's like Papageorge caught her mid-pose, ready to take on the world. Papageorge reminds me a bit of Garry Winogrand, in the sense of capturing the pulse of American life, without getting too romantic about it. There's a realness here, a moment grabbed from the flow of time, leaving us to fill in the gaps.