Elderly Woman, Paris 1950

Gordon Parks made this photograph, Elderly Woman, Paris, using, well, a camera. I'm mostly a painter, but I have to say, this image has got a lot of painterly qualities. I'm thinking about what it might have felt like for Parks, setting up the shot, considering the light, and, most of all, regarding his subject. The woman's dark clothing and hat create this somber tone and her face is marked with such deep lines. You can see where time has worked on her and etched itself into her very being. Then we notice the other hand. Whose is it? Is she reaching or receiving? Maybe Park’s is trying to capture a sense of something more... I guess, for me, this photo speaks to photography’s great capacity to document but also connect us to one another.