Untitled (two girls and a boy having a tea party) c. 1950

Curator: This photographic work, by Jack Gould, presents "Untitled (two girls and a boy having a tea party)." Its modest dimensions offer an intimate perspective. The image itself is presented as a negative. Editor: My first impression is one of play and inverted formality. The light is strangely reversed, yet it creates a sense of almost eerie, manufactured domesticity. Curator: Exactly, let's consider the reversed tones. Perhaps it speaks to the constructed nature of childhood innocence itself, a performance of gender roles within the confines of domestic space. What is produced in the process of pretending? Editor: The labor of childhood perhaps? It's interesting to consider the labor of this image's creation. The photograph's materiality and its negative state disrupt our expectations. What was Gould's goal? Curator: I think Gould asks us to examine those very assumptions—to see the social scripts being rehearsed and perhaps even subverted by these young actors. Editor: Yes, and the means matter. A negative disrupts the visual language, forcing us to reconsider what we see and how it was made. Curator: A thought-provoking image on several levels, indeed. Editor: It certainly encourages us to look beyond the surface.