Untitled (two chimps on stage playing baseball) c. 1950

Editor: This is an untitled photograph by Jack Gould of two chimpanzees on stage playing baseball. I find the negative format particularly striking. What can you tell me about the materiality of this image? Curator: The photographic negative reveals much about the means of production. Note the "Kodak" imprint: this points to the industrial processes that made photography accessible. The image itself, depicting performing chimps, speaks to labor, commodification, and the blurred lines between entertainment and exploitation. What do you make of the backdrop? Editor: It looks like a painted farm scene. So the chimps' labor is staged against an idealized, perhaps false, vision of rural labor? Curator: Precisely. This juxtaposition invites us to consider the social contexts of labor, both human and animal, and the ways in which images can obscure or reveal those realities.