I fell in love with this photograph the moment I saw it. This is one of the rare photographs that makes me question the distinction between the art of the photograph and fine art. It depicts an older African American woman looking beyond the edges of the photograph. And everything about this photograph – from the contrast to the texture to the lighting – is perfect.
After reading a little about Solomon’s background and seeing some of her other work, the methods she used to capture this image make sense. This particular photograph is one of Solomon’s earlier works. She “discovered photography” in 1968, at the age of 38, after traveling the world with The Experiment in International Living. (http://www.rosalindsolomon.com/biography.htm) She began her career in photography with an intense interest in dolls. That is a very interesting concept. A photograph of a doll is not a mere still-life, because a doll is designed in the image of a human. And a doll is frozen. It has only one expression forever. In this sense, the thought that goes into photographing a doll is similar to the thought that goes into photographing a statue. The object is frozen, ready for the photographer to frame with his or her lens and either capture the message it was designed to voice or put a twist on it. With this comes the technical decisions that come in capturing the doll-statue. It is treated as an object, a work of art, and its texture, form, and color must be properly displayed.
All of this is visible in the photograph now hanging at the MoMA. Solomon captures the woman’s personality as well as the emotions inside her as she looks up and away from the camera lens. At the same time she makes the woman almost statuesque in her presentation of the woman’s face. The texture of her skin that is captured is almost three-dimensional, because it is so detailed and beautifully lit. This texture is in contrast to the (again finely-detailed) textures of her hat, and the beads around her neck. It also seems to almost merge with the darkness around her. The viewer is not sure where the shadows end and her skin begins. All of these visually-interesting elements work to focus the viewer’s attention on what is the center of the photograph: the woman’s eye.
Against the darkness of the woman’s skin and the shadows, and in contrast to the multitude of textures that makes up the form of the woman, we find the woman’s eye, bright and bold and looking at an unknown spot. We cannot tell what the woman is thinking, exactly, but perhaps she does not know what to think either, and here is where the photograph becomes more than just a photograph or “just art”. Chattannooga, Tennessee in the 1970s was a city known for its socioeconomic challenges, and racial tension. This woman was living in an uncertain city in uncertain times, and we, the viewers of this photograph, are left to wonder with her what lies before her, and what she is (quite literally) facing.
