Untitled (portrait of young woman with chin on hand on bare shoulder) c. 1940

This portrait of a young woman, of unknown date and authorship, is made with the traditional photographic process of a negative on film. We should note that even this seemingly dematerialized medium, light captured on celluloid, is in fact intensely material. The film stock itself is a product of industrial chemistry, and the development process is one of careful control and manipulation. It is, if you like, a darkroom craft. The ethereal quality of this particular image, with its soft focus and ghostly tonality, speaks to photography’s unique capacity to render the human form in ways that painting and sculpture simply cannot. Yet the very accessibility of photography, its potential for mass production and consumption, has often relegated it to a secondary status in the hierarchy of art. But, as this image reminds us, the material process of photography is itself a form of making, imbued with social and cultural significance. It challenges our notions of labor, skill, and the very definition of art.