Portrait of a Shade 1953

Ilse Bing conjured "Portrait of a Shade" with light and shadow, capturing a dance as old as time itself. The image is split: one side striped with the hard lines of a window shade and the other decorated with an elegant pattern, but both cast in the same silvery light. I can imagine Bing, cloaked in darkness, waiting for a particular time of day to capture this moment. A photographer is a hunter of light, after all. I wonder what it was like to peer through her lens, watching and waiting as the mundane became magical. She’s known for these black and white photographs. I think of her photographic compositions as existing in conversation with abstract expressionist painters. I see the work as a beautiful expression of contrasts and transitions, the way one state transforms into another. Bing embraced ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing her photographs to invite multiple readings.