Gezin c. 1949 - 1969

Curator: This gelatin silver print, entitled "Gezin," offers a tender glimpse into family life sometime between 1949 and 1969. It is part of an anonymous collection here. Editor: The first thing that strikes me is the intimacy. The tonal range, the silver gelatin, lends itself to a starkness; it feels as if it were taken almost in someone's backyard on a hot summer day. A captured memory in monochrome, if you will. Curator: Indeed. Considering its potential date range, such straightforward, unfiltered depictions of the nuclear family were quite common, particularly in post-war contexts where domesticity was often valorized. However, if we think about photography's democratization as a medium, pictures such as these were very popular and thus distributed within personal circles but absent from any larger social presence, as, say, advertising. Editor: And structurally, look at how the light functions: almost a harsh division. The edges fade and there is very little nuance between shade and light, but I wonder if it could be considered formally against images created in those decades of artistic experimentation that also took shape after World War II. Curator: That's interesting. But also what can we interpret, if at all, when assessing anonymous or vernacular work in an environment in which the images' history is lost and almost irrelevant compared to our reading. Do we even approach this photograph, with its stark contrast, with the semiotic lens of the other objects here? Editor: That's precisely the point. How can we divorce this particular, albeit personal moment captured here, from a broader social landscape of domestic expectations or even a more conceptual examination of what an art object entails. In any case, the arrangement of the sitters as such certainly plays into those considerations of family and photographic realism. The eye goes between faces, looking for likeness or reflection as any family photograph does. Curator: I find the question it poses compelling; is this snapshot now a valuable record? It makes one consider the trajectory from everyday life to exhibited art. Editor: The image stays with you in an interesting way, right?