Gretchen Bender 1986

This is a photograph of Gretchen Bender, made by David Robbins. It's a very particular kind of black and white photo that you don’t see so much anymore. It kind of reminds me of a school portrait, you know? In a photo like this, the tones are really important. The gradations from light to dark, the way the light catches the hair, and the evenness of the background—it’s all very controlled. The details of the darks are soft, but there is something about the bright white of her teeth that really snaps. And you can see the kind of paper it’s printed on. It's got this subtle sheen, which gives it a kind of depth. It's interesting to think about how different this is from the kind of images we see every day now. I look at this and think about the work of someone like Richard Prince, who also explored ideas around portraiture and celebrity, and how they approached similar ideas with very different methods. Ultimately, art is always a conversation, right?