Blue Girl, Peru 1960

Gordon Parks made this photograph, 'Blue Girl, Peru', using, well, a camera, sometime in the twentieth century. The whole image is drenched in this incredible blue hue. It’s not just a color; it’s a mood, a filter through which we see this young girl and her world. It's like she is emerging from the depths of the color itself. The blue is rich, almost velvety in places, especially when you look at the wall behind her. You can almost feel the texture of the paint, or whatever that surface is made of. The way it's applied, it's all about the surface itself, the physicality of the medium. Her dress, too, seems to absorb the blue, making her almost disappear into the background, yet she stands out. Parks has this knack for making us feel things deeply through his images, maybe like Ernst Haas, who explored similar emotive depths with color. It reminds us that art isn’t just about what we see, but how we feel, and the stories we tell ourselves. There’s always more than one way to look at things, more than one story to tell.