Henry Hadwin, Angola, Louisiana 19 - 1999

This is Deborah Luster’s photograph of Henry Hadwin, Angola, Louisiana, and it shimmers with a kind of strange, ghostly light. It's a small thing, about 5 x 4 inches, so you're getting up close and personal with it. I imagine Luster working with this photographic plate, coaxing out these metallic tones, this amber glow around the edges. The black is so deep, it feels like you could fall into it, but then Hadwin emerges, present but also… distant? I wonder what he’s thinking, sitting for Luster in Angola, Louisiana. His hair sticks up in a defiant quiff and he is captured mid-squat. There's a vulnerability here, a realness, that transcends the photographic process. Luster's work often brings forgotten people to the surface, like a kind of visual archeology. It makes me think about other image makers, like Diane Arbus, who looked for those on the margins of society and made them iconic. Photography is a form of portraiture, a conversation across time, a way of seeing and feeling.