Self-portrait in window, Saint George, Utah 1953

Dorothea Lange made this black and white photograph, Self-portrait in window, Saint George, Utah, with a camera, of course. The window is an old gridded one, and through the glass, you can see the barest glimpse of Lange herself. It's all about surface, you know? The rough texture of the brick, the weathered wood of the frame. Look closely at the bottom right corner, where the wall is crumbling away. That gritty materiality becomes the real subject, right? It reminds me of some of those abstract expressionist paintings, like a de Kooning, where the paint is thick and messy, and the image almost disappears into the physicality of the medium. Lange does something similar here. She uses the window as a kind of screen, obscuring and revealing at the same time. It’s not just a window, it’s a filter, a way of seeing, or maybe, not seeing. It's about the act of looking, of trying to make sense of the world. Art is like that, an ongoing conversation, always questioning.