Logar, Afghanistan 1982

Ed Grazda made this photograph, 'Logar, Afghanistan.' Think of him, out there in that landscape, looking. I bet he saw that figure in the blanket first, huddled against the mud wall. That diagonal of fabric repeats the slope of the land. The wall itself reminds me of a minimalist sculpture, maybe something by Carl Andre, but crumbling a little. The whole scene sits on a tipping point, tilting to the left, anchored by the slender tree like a see-saw. The photograph flattens the space, pushing the distant mountains into the same plane as the figure. The picture plane is like a shallow stage. I can imagine the feel of the dry earth under his boots, the vast sky pressing down. Photography can do that, fix a moment in time, but also let us wander into another world. It's a conversation, like painting, reaching across time and space.