Untitled c. 1948

Curator: Well, this is a gritty little scene. It’s an untitled photograph by David Seymour, circa 1948. Look at these boys... caught in this in-between place. Editor: Right, I feel this in my bones. Something about the smoke and shadows, a fragile masculinity or something, mixed with that grainy film... there’s something painfully beautiful in it. It feels like childhood hanging on by a thread. Curator: Agreed. Seymour, working often with photojournalism collective Magnum, documented Europe after the war. The images weren't simply documents. Editor: Not at all! They tell the quiet stories. And in his capturing these boys smoking on what looks like stone steps...is it Italy?…there’s a sense of both bravado and vulnerability. You almost smell the cigarette smoke! Curator: Quite possibly Italy. He captured children in displaced persons camps, grappling with trauma. So we must ask ourselves, where did this cigarette come from? Scrounged? Bartered? The very material of the photograph makes the narrative tangible. What's for certain, it symbolizes their precarious existence in postwar Europe. Editor: Oh, completely, it is symbolic for a maturity thrust upon them. The lighting is intense, drawing our eye to their faces, their clothes, even the stone around them. You see it’s not a posed shot. I like the off-center composition—sort of raw, unplanned even! Which suggests the reality of the setting he captured here! A sort of, unvarnished slice-of-life quality. Curator: The image, beyond its documentary quality, uses tonal range to offer meaning, doesn't it? Look at the light, how it renders the textures, of skin and cheap cloth and of ancient stones. I suspect there's considerable labor involved in the material production of this photo, in its circulation even now. Editor: Yes! There is so much unsaid—which speaks volumes. Curator: It leaves us to reflect on the legacy of conflict and resilience, of course. But even of how we continue to create images that shape narratives and perpetuate myths about people, places, materials. Editor: So true. You leave the piece thinking what became of them, I mean truly became... and really... that is what great images do, isn't it?