Crazyhorse Saloon 1956

Burt Glinn made this photograph, Crazyhorse Saloon, using gelatin silver. It's a study in contrasts, isn't it? He's playing with light and shadow as tools to build the image. It feels like the photograph is built up from tiny particles of light. Look how the figures in the foreground are almost swallowed by darkness, while the stage is bathed in an ethereal glow. There’s a push and pull, a conversation between what’s revealed and what’s hidden. The woman on stage, caught in the spotlight, feels almost unreal, like a figure from a dream. The figures in the background are blurred into the walls, and their expressions are inscrutable, lost to the shadows. It's like Caravaggio, but with a camera. I think Glinn is using these ideas to hint at the darker side of human behaviour. It calls to mind work by Diane Arbus, who walked a similar line. Ultimately, the picture is about the mystery of looking, and being looked at.