Mount Chacaltaya, Bolivia 1975

Ed Grazda shot this photograph, Mount Chacaltaya, Bolivia, sometime after he was born in 1947. It’s a black and white print of two Bolivian men standing in the snow. I wonder what Grazda was thinking when he pressed the shutter release. Maybe it was cold! Look how the falling snow is captured in the frame, each flake a tiny white disc against the blurry ground. I imagine the guy on the left might be shy, pulling at the strings of his balaclava, while the other one looks cool in his fedora, some kind of dude in the snow. They stand together in the shot, maybe friends, maybe strangers brought together by the weather. I like the way their hands mirror one another. Photography and painting both capture a moment in time. They both use light and shadow to create form. But photography has the ability to document something real, something that existed in front of the lens. What do you think? I wonder what would happen if I turned this photograph into a painting?