Untitled (portrait of woman wearing hat with bow and coat with fur collar sitting in elegant chair) 1935

Curator: This haunting, small photograph, currently held at the Harvard Art Museums, is titled simply "Untitled (portrait of woman wearing hat with bow and coat with fur collar sitting in elegant chair)" by Martin Schweig. Editor: Haunting is right. The contrast is stark, almost ghostly. You can see the textures of the fur and fabric, but it's as if the light is consuming her. Curator: Well, consider the social context of portraiture at the time. Photography democratized portraiture, but the trappings of wealth, like that fur collar, still signified status. Editor: True, but I'm drawn to the materiality. It is a photographic negative. This is not the final print, but it reveals the labor involved in producing an image, the chemical processes. Curator: And the pose, so deliberate. She's participating in a visual language of elegance and refinement, one that reinforces societal expectations. The chair itself is a prop. Editor: Indeed. A prop made of wood, carved by someone, upholstered with a specific fabric. Those details show a whole network of labor and consumption that supports this single image. It's like a small window into a larger economic ecosystem. Curator: Looking at this image, I see how portraiture served as a vehicle for social mobility, or at least, the appearance of it. Editor: Seeing its negative form highlights the means through which that appearance was constructed.