Untitled (exterior of home) c. 1950

This is a 4 x 5 inch photograph, a suburban house rendered in stark contrasts by Robert Burian. I'm immediately drawn to how the image flips our perception, the darks become light and vice versa, it's like looking at a world turned inside out. The texture becomes strange, the trees look like glowing spectres and the neat siding of the house is thrown into sharp relief. See how the lawn stretches out like a pool of ink, a dark abyss that mirrors the inverted sky above. This photograph makes me think about what happens when we invert expectations, like peeling back the layers of the everyday to expose the underlying weirdness. Burian’s image reminds me a little of Cindy Sherman's early black and white work, the everyday made strange, and reminds us that there is always another way of seeing, another reality lurking just beneath the surface.