There’s a recurring deadness here, a sense of defeat or resignation. Nearly all the people either stare back at the camera or look off into space. Berndt’s “The Combat Zone, Washington St., Boston, 1968’’ is emblematic. The slight reflection from the plate-glass window reminds us of the barrier between the woman sitting in the coffee shop and the rest of the world. Her out-to-there false eyelashes further contribute to the effect. There’s no real in between in the Zone, little or no sense of human connection. That’s as it should be. The Zone was a place of extremes. Almost all the pictures are big, and properly so. Demure and delicate are not operative words here for either form or content.
We see strippers, hookers, johns, various persons of indeterminate purpose (but they sure don’t seem to be up to any good). Almost no one is identified by other than a first name. One of the exceptions is Angier’s “Mr. and Mrs. Steve Mills, Pilgrim Theater.’’ Very Diane Arbus, it shows a baggy-pants comic in his 80s with his young wife, who looks like Sarah Vowell in a prom dress. Maybe they would have been better off not being identified.
See the full article from “Boston Globe”