A beautiful woman with dark-rimmed eyes, seen from the window of a passing bus, becomes a monument as enduring as the marble front of the Public Library rising behind her. Still photography turns a fugitive glimpse into a permanent record that can be studied for any length of time. The street is empty, the horse walks calmly, and the boy sits on its back with easy grace.ĭocumentary films about photographers are caught between images that flow and images that freeze talking heads unpack the significance of iconic images seen all too fleetingly. A young black man dressed in white rides a dark horse bareback under the shadow of the El: the picture lingers in the mind like a cryptic poem. Cut off from time before and after, they have the excitement of mysteries forever on the verge of being solved.

The power of great photographs comes from the tension between what they reveal and what they withhold. Still pictures are more secretive than moving pictures.

Huddled on the sidewalk, he turns himself into his own protective shell he draws himself inward, hiding, yet makes a shape that arrests the eye. His light-colored suit and hat are dirty, but he wears good shoes, and there is a ring on his hand. Sitting on the ground, the homeless man curls himself into an elegant spiral: knees raised, arms wrapped, head lowered so that nothing shows but the round top of his cloth cap.

John maloof vivian maier