Sphynx, Cairo 1979

Max Yavno made this silver gelatin print of the Sphynx and the Pyramids sometime in the 20th century, and what strikes me is the way he’s used light and shadow to flatten and compress the distance between these monuments. It's almost like he's painting with light. There’s a gorgeous, gritty texture to the stone, each block seems tactile, almost crumbly under the sharp Egyptian light. Look how the light skims across the Sphynx’s face, emphasising the smoothness of the features against the rough-hewn surround. It reminds me a bit of the way Edward Weston photographed landscapes, finding abstract forms in the natural world, but there’s also a cinematic quality to Yavno’s work, perhaps hinting at the influence of the movies on modern ways of seeing. For me, photography is about capturing a moment and making it timeless. It’s about embracing the ambiguity of the image, letting it speak in multiple voices and meanings.