Untitled (guests at cocktail party seated around small table) 1952

Curator: This striking photograph by Peter James Studio captures an untitled scene of guests at a cocktail party, frozen in time. It measures about 10 by 12 centimeters. Editor: The negative contrast gives it this ghostly quality, as though we're peering in on a memory struggling to surface. All those faces, mostly obscured... Curator: It's fascinating, isn’t it? The starkness emphasizes the materiality of the film itself. We see how the image is constructed. Editor: The way the photographer stages the scene around that small table - it makes you wonder about the power dynamics at play. Who gets a seat? Who remains on the periphery? Curator: I feel a certain melancholy, thinking about all those fleeting conversations and untold stories, captured but ultimately lost to time. Editor: Well, I am mostly concerned with the hidden labor behind this gathering: the catering, the cleaning, all the things invisible in the final print. Curator: It's a ghost of a moment—perhaps all the more haunting because of what it leaves unsaid. Editor: Precisely, and what its production attempts to conceal.