PHOTOGRAPHY MAY BE AT THE PERPETUAL MERCY of scalar adjustment, but
Apprehension is among those images whose intensity remains constant no matter where it is seen. Its central feature is the magnified face of a young Asian man who grasps a telephone receiver as he might a cudgel. Deep furrows are etched into his forehead, and a lock of hair falls across his face. Two errant hairs extending beyond his eye read like fracture lines portending some future dissolution or rupture. Illuminated from an unseen source below, the man’s face is a terrain of shadow and light. His flesh becomes a histrionic play of rose and gold that recalls both the lurid eroticism of midcentury pulp illustration and the imbrication of Baroque religious painting with secular drama.