Early That Morning Possibly 1993 - 1995

Jim Goldberg made this print, "Early That Morning," sometime in his career. It’s a photograph, but it has the weight of a painting – stark and heavy. The image hovers between intimacy and distance. A hand presses against a head, or maybe it’s just resting there. The stark light emphasizes the texture of the hair, each strand a study in grayscale. I think of Goldberg in the darkroom, coaxing these tones out of the shadows. What was he thinking? Was this a moment of grief, reflection, or just the quiet start to a day? As a painter, I think about how different materials can say different things, and how there's something about black and white that cuts through the noise. It’s raw. It’s about form, light, and feeling. Like early photography by people like Stieglitz and Strand, this is a kind of modernism. Goldberg invites us to see not just with our eyes, but with our hearts. It’s a reminder that art is a conversation across time, each artist building on the work of those who came before, finding new ways to express the human condition.