If you aren’t already following it, take a look at Shorpy: The 100 Year Old Photography Blog, where really wonderful old photographs appear daily, often with some descriptive text or comments. Yesterday’s Dorothea Lange photograph (“A New Beginning: 1939“) is absolutely wonderful. (You can view it full size.) At first glance it might seem like an old photo of some guy, but there is so much to like in this photograph. The face of this “Ex-Nebraska farmer” is an absolute wonder – simultaneously inscrutable and open. And the image is a lesson in reducing the content down to only that which is absolutely critical to the subject – nothing more and nothing less.

(For something a bit more scary, take a look at this photo while you are there…)