Yale-Harvard Game, New Haven, Connecticut 1977

Larry Fink made this silver gelatin print, "Yale-Harvard Game, New Haven, Connecticut," and, you know, it’s not about the game, right? It's about the getting ready for the game. Fink’s process feels raw, like a snapshot but with intention. Look at the way the light catches the bottles on the table. The blacks are so deep. It's like he's digging into the shadow of the scene. There’s a certain off-the-cuffness to the composition - like he didn’t arrange these people, but caught them in a moment of being. The contrast between the sharp focus on the foreground figures and the softer background adds to the sense of immediacy. Each detail is so loaded. I think about Nan Goldin, who also captured life unvarnished, and the German photographer August Sander, who categorized people with his camera. Fink's work, like theirs, makes you think about how we see each other, and what stories images can tell. It’s all just a conversation, isn’t it?