Untitled (women holding baby seated on couch with younger woman and two boys) c. 1955

This untitled photograph was made by Paul Gittings. It captures a family scene, but it’s printed as a negative, which kind of gives it this ghostly, dreamlike quality, right? The whole image is full of this grainy texture, like a swarm of tiny dots, but there are also these little imperfections and scratches scattered across the surface. They remind you that this isn’t just an image, it’s an object, something that has been handled and touched. Focusing on the hands, for example, you can see how they almost blend into the fabric of the baby's dress, this gives the picture a feeling of interconnectedness. It blurs the boundaries between the people and the objects, inviting you to see everything as a whole. The image kind of reminds me of the work of someone like Diane Arbus, who was so good at capturing these very human, intimate moments that also feel a little strange and unsettling. This photograph, with its imperfections and ghostly tones, is not just a picture of a family, but also a meditation on memory, time, and the way we look at each other.