Atlantic City Possibly 1973 - 1994

Richard Gordon made this photograph, Atlantic City, using gelatin silver. It's a study in tone and texture, like an exercise in balancing light, shadow, and the in-between. The photograph captures figures on a beach, but it's the way the scene is rendered that grabs me. Look at the sand, how it stretches out, almost blurring into the ocean, and then the sky. It’s so open, vast, but also strangely confining, like you can't escape the gray. It reminds me of the paintings of someone like Gerhard Richter, that same exploration of the photographic image and its properties. The suited figures lend a strange quality to the piece. The man with the camera is pointing it directly at the viewer, or at the subjects. The shadow is quite dark, and the figures could be anyone. Gordon's art often plays with these kinds of quiet dissonances, capturing the strange beauty in the everyday.