Untitled (woman and little girl seated together on sofa, both wearing dresses) c. 1955

Paul Gittings, a photographer with studios in Houston, Dallas, and New Orleans, made this photograph on an unknown date. We see a seated woman, probably a mother, holding a little girl in her lap, both formally dressed. Gittings' images were often society portraits. The composition and formality signal a certain social class, likely upper or upper-middle class in the American South. To understand this picture, we might research the history of commercial portrait studios and the social rituals around family photographs. Who were Gittings' clients? What role did images play in shaping their identities? How did class, race, and gender factor into this system? These questions are central to understanding the politics of imagery. Art doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's entangled with social conditions, institutional structures, and cultural norms. Historians piece together these contexts, using archives, biographies, and other primary sources to reveal the complex meanings embedded within a seemingly simple image.