Somewhere in midtown, at night, two people stand close together with their backs to us. A man in a soft felt hat, his face in near-silhouette; a woman beside him whose blond hair is pinned in tight curls beneath a straw hat heaped with pale flowers. Beyond them the city dissolves. Tall buildings go out of focus into a field of soft white discs, a row of bright lamps suspended in the dark, the smeared verticals of illuminated signs. Faurer has thrown almost everything but the two heads into a haze of light.
I keep returning to that decision, because it is the whole picture. A sharper photographer would have given us the avenue. Faurer gives us instead the experience of standing too close to strangers under electric light, where the world past your shoulder turns to a blur of luminous circles. The flowered hat sits in crisp focus against that softness, every petal legible, while the skyscraper behind it is only an idea of a skyscraper. Attention, the image proposes, is shallow and local; the city is the out-of-focus remainder.
Made in 1949, this is Faurer at his most lyrical, trusting the lens wide open and the long gradations of grey that the gelatin silver print preserves so well. The night is not black but a continuum of whites bleeding into greys. There is intimacy here, but also distance, since we never see the faces of the two we are closest to. We are left with the backs of their heads and a sky full of lights that refuse to resolve.
Somewhere in midtown, at night, two people stand close together with their backs to us. A man in a soft felt hat, his face in near-silhouette; a woman beside him whose blond hair is pinned in tight curls beneath a straw hat heaped with pale flowers. Beyond them the city dissolves. Tall buildings go out of focus into a field of soft white discs, a row of bright lamps suspended in the dark, the smeared verticals of illuminated signs. Faurer has thrown almost everything but the two heads into a haze of light.
I keep returning to that decision, because it is the whole picture. A sharper photographer would have given us the avenue. Faurer gives us instead the experience of standing too close to strangers under electric light, where the world past your shoulder turns to a blur of luminous circles. The flowered hat sits in crisp focus against that softness, every petal legible, while the skyscraper behind it is only an idea of a skyscraper. Attention, the image proposes, is shallow and local; the city is the out-of-focus remainder.
Made in 1949, this is Faurer at his most lyrical, trusting the lens wide open and the long gradations of grey that the gelatin silver print preserves so well. The night is not black but a continuum of whites bleeding into greys. There is intimacy here, but also distance, since we never see the faces of the two we are closest to. We are left with the backs of their heads and a sky full of lights that refuse to resolve.