David Robbins 1986

Here's David Robbins, looking straight at us in black and white, with a simple caption in the corner. I can imagine him setting up the shot, adjusting his glasses, maybe thinking about how he wants to be seen. The light catches his hair, making it look like a cloud of dark, soft ink. It’s a very direct image, almost like a passport photo, yet it feels really intimate. I wonder if Robbins was thinking about other artists who used photography. There’s something about the plainness of the shot that reminds me of a lot of portrait photographers and their no-nonsense approach. It's like he's saying, ‘Here I am, take it or leave it.’ What I love about photography—like painting—is how an artist can take something ordinary, like a portrait, and make you see it in a completely new way. They all keep talking to each other, these artists, across time and space, inspiring each other's experiments. It's like they're all in one big, messy, creative conversation.