Chrysler Building, New York 1936

Here's Ilse Bing's photograph, a silvery gelatin print. The Chrysler Building shoots up into the sky but a sandwich shop is claiming its own space down below. I imagine Bing pointing her camera upwards, the frame tilted to capture both the mundane and the monumental. The darkroom work must have been delicious, coaxing out the tones from the negative and letting the city emerge. This act of selection—what to keep, what to burn out, what to let fall into shadow—is not so different from painting, really. Bing is playing with forms, letting contrasts speak. I love that she got the signage in there. "Coffee and Sandwich Shop," it reads, right below "Shanty." What a juxtaposition! Maybe it's a nod to the everyday grit that makes New York so magnetic. The Chrysler Building is so optimistic, so full of Jazz Age exuberance. It is there because of the hard labour of all of these workers. Painters look to photographs for inspiration, but photographers also learn from painters. Bing must have known that, in her bones.