Glasses 1974

This is Nathan Lerner’s photo, “Glasses.” It’s a gelatin silver print and seems to have been made at no particular date. The glasses are these repeated shapes, like a modular unit, and the black and white creates a flat, almost graphic feel, but it is a photograph with depth and layers. You can see through the shop window, out to the street with the light reflecting off the glass, and the glasses themselves are ghostly in the foreground. It’s a strange flatness that also feels very deep, spatially. The marks are all about contrast, you have these pure black shapes held against the light of the street behind the window. Our vision is very much a part of this picture, it plays with how we see and what we choose to look at. I’m reminded of the work of Ray Yoshida and his collection of comic book clippings, the way he would flatten space and use repetition to create pattern. All those comic book faces feel somehow related to these floating glasses. Anyway, this piece is worth another look, and another.