Park City 95 1979

Lewis Baltz made this photograph, Park City 95, using photography – obviously! - to look at the built environment. I love the way Baltz uses the black and white tones. See how they’re almost like a wash, a watercolor effect? The grays are soft and smudgy at the edges, which makes me think about process. Like, what did the space feel like as Baltz worked? What kind of energy did he bring to the work? There’s nothing hidden here, the image lays bare the inner workings of space, as if Baltz is showing us the skeleton before the flesh. The dark gray, it’s not quite a line, but more of a stain, surrounding a central white void, making you feel like you are peering into the nothingness. The texture and surface here are so smooth. It’s as if Baltz wiped the image clean to make way for new ideas, almost like a Cy Twombly blackboard. I think of the way photography, like all art, is a conversation, this piece speaks to the quiet, stark beauty that is so often overlooked. It finds meaning in emptiness, and invites us to do the same.