By Paul Goldfinger, MD. Editor Blogfinger.net. Ocean Grove, NJ. USA. 12/24/23
This is one of my favorite photographs, and Diana Krall’s “White Christmas” is also very special. And so is the Christmas season where sleigh bells ring—are you listening?
Christmas music can be monotonous after awhile in December, but so much great music is about Christmas, so I like to post it out of season to show its uniqueness. It’s like the jewelry store principle: just take one diamond out at a time and show it by itself on black velvet in a light that makes it glow —–
“The White Night” Central Park, Christmas Eve, 1932. By Adolph Fassbender Re-posted from Blogfinger. 2014.
This photograph is from the January 27, 1997 issue of the New Yorker magazine. It was part of a photography exhibit review featuring the work of Adolph Fassbender (1884-1980).
He was an artist who followed the romantic painterly Pictorialist style of photography long after it fell into disfavor around 1915. The quote below is from the New Yorker piece about this image. The title of the article was “Slow Dazzle.”
” ‘The White Night,” made on Christmas Eve, 1932, in Central Park, during a late-afternoon blizzard, is one of the highlights of the Fassbender show opening this week at Gallery 292, in SoHo.
“The buildings on the Plaza were invisible but for a faint glow; the artist got off just one three-and-a-half-minute exposure before his shutter froze. Out of raging wind and snow he coaxed this woolly, lamplit nocturne — a tribute not to speed but to contentment and rest.
“Photograph shows a path in Central Park covered with snow, bordered by bare black branches, and buildings in the distance with lighted windows seen through mist.”
–reprinted from Blogfinger. By Paul Goldfinger, Editor.
DIANA KRALL