155th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, Manhattan 1990

This gelatin silver print of 155th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Manhattan, by Madoka Takagi, has such a beautiful stillness. It's amazing how black and white can pull you in, right? I love the texture here, how the light catches on the metalwork of the elevated train tracks, and the posters plastered on the corrugated iron. The shadows are so solid, they almost feel like another material. It reminds me how much photography is about capturing a specific moment, but also how much it's about seeing. Takagi has framed this everyday scene in a way that makes you really look. Look at the way the stairs cut diagonally across the frame, drawing your eye up into the tangle of metal above. It's almost like a drawing in space, a web of lines and shapes that somehow feels both solid and ephemeral. It reminds me a little of Bernd and Hilla Becher's photographs of industrial structures, that same quiet observation and attention to detail. It's a reminder that art is all about how we see the world, and how we choose to frame it.