Ragsdale Beauty Shop/Poodle Cut, Detroit 1951

Here's a photograph by Harry Callahan of a beauty shop, probably taken sometime in the mid-20th century. You know, sometimes I feel like photography and painting aren't that different; it’s all about light and shadow, composition, and how you choose to frame the world. Callahan was really interested in the ordinary, the stuff we see every day but often overlook. It takes a certain kind of eye to find the extraordinary in the everyday. I bet he wandered around Detroit, camera in hand, just soaking it all in, waiting for the right moment, the perfect alignment of light and shadow. This is a photograph about surfaces, isn't it? The reflective glass of the window, the signs, the lights. He used the camera to build a composition, layering one thing over another. Painters and photographers are always in conversation, you know, trading ideas across time. It’s like we’re all part of this big, ongoing, creative jam session, riffing off each other, inspiring each other to see the world in new ways. And just as a painter will keep going, adding layer upon layer, Callahan has built something out of all this street-level stuff.