Is the man the subject, or is the sign? A heavyset figure in a dark hat and light suit stands at the entrance of a dance hall, a cigar clamped in his mouth, a plume of smoke drifting off into the bright wall behind him. Over his shoulder, in confident hand-lettered capitals, the words DANCE WITH BEAUTIFUL GIRLS. To his left, framed photographs of women hang on the wall, advertisements for whatever is sold inside. Faurer caught him mid-glance, eyes cut to one side, neither welcoming nor menacing, simply present.
The photograph works by collision. The promise on the wall is all glamour and appetite; the man delivering it is rumpled, jowled, ordinary, the smoke giving his presence a faintly seedy weather. Faurer does not mock him. He lets the gap between the advertised pleasure and the actual doorman sit open, unjudged, and that gap is where the picture lives. It is a study in salesmanship and the worn human machinery behind it.
By 1951 Faurer had spent years reading the signage of Times Square and 42nd Street, the way its language of pleasure papered over something lonelier. Here the lettering is so emphatic it nearly becomes the picture's other figure, looming as large as the man. The gelatin silver print holds the contrast crisply: the dark hat, the pale wall, the soft grey drift of smoke. What remains is less a portrait than a small theatre of persuasion, the seller and his slogan caught in the same frame, neither quite convincing.
Is the man the subject, or is the sign? A heavyset figure in a dark hat and light suit stands at the entrance of a dance hall, a cigar clamped in his mouth, a plume of smoke drifting off into the bright wall behind him. Over his shoulder, in confident hand-lettered capitals, the words DANCE WITH BEAUTIFUL GIRLS. To his left, framed photographs of women hang on the wall, advertisements for whatever is sold inside. Faurer caught him mid-glance, eyes cut to one side, neither welcoming nor menacing, simply present.
The photograph works by collision. The promise on the wall is all glamour and appetite; the man delivering it is rumpled, jowled, ordinary, the smoke giving his presence a faintly seedy weather. Faurer does not mock him. He lets the gap between the advertised pleasure and the actual doorman sit open, unjudged, and that gap is where the picture lives. It is a study in salesmanship and the worn human machinery behind it.
By 1951 Faurer had spent years reading the signage of Times Square and 42nd Street, the way its language of pleasure papered over something lonelier. Here the lettering is so emphatic it nearly becomes the picture's other figure, looming as large as the man. The gelatin silver print holds the contrast crisply: the dark hat, the pale wall, the soft grey drift of smoke. What remains is less a portrait than a small theatre of persuasion, the seller and his slogan caught in the same frame, neither quite convincing.