Went to SFMoMA to see the Cartier-Bresson show, which was amazing, an entire floor of the seminal photographer's works. His eye was stunning. I can only imagine that he had a sense, an inner excitement that came over him that compelled him to push the shutter button at just the right moment.
The photograph that most amazed me, however, was not Bresson's, but Oliver Lutz's "The lynching of Leo Frank ", which you can see hanging on the wall to the right. If it looks like it's totally black, that's because it is. You don't see anything at all, and may at first glance think you're looking at one of those minimalist gestures of painting's contemporary history. But this is in a photography exhibit. It turns out the black paint is infrared-sensitive paint. In the upper left corner, you can see an infrared camera, and standing in the middle of the room on the column, a television showing the video feed. What do you see on the television? The image of yourself looking at the screen, while behind you, the black image isn't black at all, but a photograph of the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish-American in 1915. To put it mildly, it's shocking. An image you can't see that is plainly there to other kinds of seeing. It frames you in the image along with the witnesses of the murder, asking questions about deception, what is hidden and how it is revealed, secrecy, concealment. The show that this piece was in was called "Voyeurism," and this piece explores the ways in which seeing can be secret depending on how you look, and with what sensory apparaatus you are using. Brilliant.
