Gueorgui Pinkhassov, “Cape Town, South Africa, 1994. Beezy Bailey, artist”.

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Sometimes a single photograph contains multitudes. Look at all the crazy elements in this scene — a blue man (or a man painted blue), a Dalmatian dog — white with black spots — posed en garde, striated white clouds in a light azure blue sky, lush verdant green grass and plantings and trees, the back of a sizable white house, with it all tipping to the left. What is this moment?

We can read the caption which is a little oblique, but knowing the actual context for the image might only serve to make the impact less dramatic.

Gueorgui Pinkhassov, “Cape Town, South Africa, 1994. Beezy Bailey, artist”.

It captures an existential primal scream of fire on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon in Cape Town.

This was published in 1994 or 95 by the New York Times Sunday Magazine. I saw it and surely whooped in delight. I no longer have any idea what the accompanying story may have been. I wanted a print of it and ultimately had to send a French speaking friend to the Magnum photographer’s apartment in Paris to secure one.

I don’t think he had ever sold a print before. But I got it.

It is a great pictures that you want to pick up and dance with, just you and the photograph. This one doesn’t need to be asked; it’s already dancing. You have to catch up with it.

Gueorgui Pinkhassov, “An attempted murder attack,” 1981

Ten years later I was in Houston at a Fotofest which was honoring photography from Russia. There was an image depicting a deadly, dreadful street crime. I immediately felt was by Pinkhassov, The picture is full of menace. The action of the two men fighting in the center of the image is repeated by a second couple, behind them repeating the conflict. There is also a silhouette in shadow. The camera feels hand-held, the photographer is right there in it. The arms are a tight spiral of action which signals the threat even before you begin to sort out the details.

Tense.

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