Untitled 1982

This gelatin silver print was made by John Gossage, who was born in 1946. What a lovely, quiet image. You can feel the artist standing there in the dirt, surrounded by unruly plants, trying to make sense of the scene before them. The dirt path on the right winds around the hill and disappears. It's so suggestive, like a question mark that the artist is posing. I wonder if Gossage felt a sense of humility standing before the landscape? Making pictures is a deeply human endeavor, and what's more human than trying to find our place in the world? The scene is very muted, a narrow tonal range. It reminds me of the work of other photographers, like Stephen Shore, who find beauty in the everyday. Gossage is teaching us to see the beauty in what's right in front of us. To notice the world anew. And that's something all artists do.