Pat Sabatine's Twelfth Birthday Party, Martins Creek, Pennsylvania 1981

Larry Fink made this photograph, "Pat Sabatine's Twelfth Birthday Party, Martins Creek, Pennsylvania," with a camera and film, capturing a moment, a feeling, a place and time. This image has this incredible, generous feeling—the kind that hits you when you are at an unexpected party where the adults are chain-smoking and the kids are bored out of their skulls. Fink's style feels like he is crashing the party and taking pictures as quick as he can. I love that quality. The cigarette hanging out of the woman's mouth is just pure gold. I bet Fink had to be quick on his feet, ducking and diving to get the shot. You know, there's a whole lineage of photography—from people like Garry Winogrand to Nan Goldin—documenting real life and the theater of just being human. Photography, like painting, is a way of figuring things out, even when you don’t know what you are looking for.