Two faces, held in profile a breath apart, withhold as much as they reveal. A woman with tousled fair hair, a velvet choker, and a dark patterned dress turns in profile toward a heavyset man whose receding hairline and plain dark coat catch the light. They stand close, eyes locked, suspended between speech and silence; behind them the dimness glitters with scattered points of light, the unglamorous backstage of Old Madison Square Garden. Whatever passes between them, Faurer keeps for them alone.
Made in 1950, the photograph comes from the period when Faurer secured access to the dressing rooms and corridors of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus. He had long been drawn to performers and outsiders, and here he turns from the spectacle of the ring to its margins, where the costumed and the ordinary meet in half-light. His sympathy is unmistakable, yet he resists explanation, presenting the encounter as overheard rather than staged.
The restraint is characteristic of Faurer's maturing art. Rather than the brimming chaos of his Times Square exposures, he gives us a contained, almost cinematic intimacy, two profiles weighted with feeling that the picture declines to name. By 1950 he had learned that suggestion could move a viewer more deeply than disclosure, and this quiet study of an unreadable exchange numbers among the subtlest pictures of his circus years.
Two faces, held in profile a breath apart, withhold as much as they reveal. A woman with tousled fair hair, a velvet choker, and a dark patterned dress turns in profile toward a heavyset man whose receding hairline and plain dark coat catch the light. They stand close, eyes locked, suspended between speech and silence; behind them the dimness glitters with scattered points of light, the unglamorous backstage of Old Madison Square Garden. Whatever passes between them, Faurer keeps for them alone.
Made in 1950, the photograph comes from the period when Faurer secured access to the dressing rooms and corridors of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus. He had long been drawn to performers and outsiders, and here he turns from the spectacle of the ring to its margins, where the costumed and the ordinary meet in half-light. His sympathy is unmistakable, yet he resists explanation, presenting the encounter as overheard rather than staged.
The restraint is characteristic of Faurer's maturing art. Rather than the brimming chaos of his Times Square exposures, he gives us a contained, almost cinematic intimacy, two profiles weighted with feeling that the picture declines to name. By 1950 he had learned that suggestion could move a viewer more deeply than disclosure, and this quiet study of an unreadable exchange numbers among the subtlest pictures of his circus years.