San Francisco, Market Street 23 - 1981

This photograph, “San Francisco, Market Street,” by John Harding, captures a moment, a slice of life, with a light touch. The colors have this lovely warmth, a kind of golden-hour feel that softens everything. Look at how Harding layers the composition. People overlap, and the surfaces of the bus and the shop windows give us reflections and half views. It’s like the image is built from fleeting moments that obscure and reveal at the same time. The woman in the fur coat stands out. The texture feels so real you can almost touch it. But then your eye is drawn to the reflection in the shop window. Are those people waiting, or just a figment of the light? Harding’s image reminds me a bit of Helen Levitt’s street photography. Both artists share a knack for finding poetry in the everyday, though Harding brings his own color sensibility to the mix. In the end, it’s this openness to the unexpected, the unscripted, that makes art so engaging.