Lobby, Shangri-La Hotel 1991

Jim Goldberg made this gelatin silver print, "Lobby, Shangri-La Hotel", sometime around the turn of the millennium. It's not a painting, but the stark black and white contrast feels like a painterly decision, you know? As if the artist is sculpting with light and shadow, a real hands-on process. The image is dominated by this sign listing all the rules, the limitations, the "no's" of the hotel, so bleak, so matter of fact. Then you notice the person on the right with a microphone, a flash of humanity, singing in the face of all that… bureaucracy? The grain of the print is thick and present, giving the image a kind of gritty texture, like sandpaper. It adds to the feeling of being right there in that cramped space, absorbing all the energy, all the rules, all the music. It makes me think of Garry Winogrand, another photographer who wasn't afraid of the messy, imperfect reality of life. It's the art of seeing, of really seeing.