Untitled c. 1945

This small, untitled photograph by Jeanne Ebstel captures a fleeting moment in time. The grayscale palette, leaning into soft contrasts, reminds me that seeing is a process. It’s about light and shadow, but also about movement. Look at the way the car is slightly blurred, giving you a sense of motion. The woman, caught mid-stride, becomes a study in angles. Her legs, the line of her coat, even the tilt of her hat, all create a dynamic composition. I think that our eyes make sense of the scene through a process of visual problem solving. We piece together what we know with what we see, and then fill in the gaps. The beauty of photography, like any art form, lies in its ability to embrace ambiguity, and in this image, the ambiguity makes room for our imagination. Think of someone like Helen Levitt, another photographer who found poetry in the everyday. Ebstel, like Levitt, invites us to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.