Watching Oprah

Jim Goldberg's Open See series of 2009 began five years earlier in Greece, where, commissioned by Magnum, he went to document the Summer Olympics. As is typical for Goldberg, he found his subjects on the periphery of the action—in ghettos, refugee camps, and border crossings where refugees and immigrants from war-torn, economically devastated, and disease-ravaged countries in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere were attempting to make a life for themselves. Watching Oprah, shot in Greece, exemplifies Goldberg's approach to the pictures in Open See: made with a landscape lens that captures both clarity and distance, they are grand in their scope and intimate in their attention to telling details. Here, three men presumably engaged in the activity suggested by the photograph's title look in three different directions. Where is Oprah?