Art Sinsabaugh 1975

This is "Art Sinsabaugh" by Mike Mandel, a photograph in black and white, printed on a small sheet. I can imagine Mike Mandel with his camera, trying to catch the right moment, the right angle, the right light. It must have been cold, the sky is ominous. The subject is someone called Art Sinsabaugh, who is holding a baseball bat, his expression unreadable. As a painter, I often think about surface, texture, and how materials behave. I think about all the decisions that go into making an image, so I wonder about the choices Mandel made, the kind of paper he used, or the way he developed the print to capture the texture and tone. There is a casualness to this image, but it is also an intimate portrait, and the result is a study of light and shadow and texture. Mandel and Sinsabaugh are now part of a long conversation between artists, working with the history of the medium and its ability to capture a moment in time. This photograph celebrates painting as a form of expression and embraces all its ambiguities.