55x5

“Among the rain / and lights / I saw the figure 5…” So wrote William Carlos
Williams in one of his most famous poems. Drawn to the strange allure of the
number 5, Alan Thomas found Williams’s “great figure” beckoning from
Sicilian graffiti to Chicago parking lots. His fifty-five photographs riff
on the number’s figurative qualities, while Kathryn Lofton’s introduction
explores its interpretive possibilities—and the nature of photographic
obsession.