Untitled [Ref. #77] 2007

Curator: My first thought is texture. I can almost feel the velvety surface. Editor: Absolutely. It’s Myra Greene's “Untitled [Ref. #77],” a gelatin-silver print created in 2007. What strikes me is how Greene presents the photographic image, challenging the very notion of portraiture itself and how it circulates. Curator: Yes, there's a fragment here. The composition with its close cropping has an unsettling effect. Is that mouth a signifier for speech? For sensuality? And does this pose any comment to a history of silencing certain groups through limiting depictions in art? Editor: Considering the photographic medium, traditionally associated with realism, that contrast intensifies. But Greene's approach to portraiture deviates from norms. Note the scratches, those surface imperfections. To me, they become like memory traces etched onto the image, refusing easy consumption or immediate legibility. There is a kind of defacement to the photograph's perfect surface. Curator: It disrupts any illusion of a fixed identity. In doing so, it raises compelling questions about visibility and representation within museum culture itself. And speaking of "surface", there is definitely a dialogue between the visual and haptic. My eyes want to perceive the smoothness of skin but are then alerted by the gritty material reality. Editor: And that texture isn’t merely aesthetic; I see it carrying symbolic weight, almost like scarification, a potent cultural marker within some communities. It evokes both beauty and vulnerability. These aren't the perfectly airbrushed portraits of popular media. There is humanity. And an unvarnished history. Curator: How astute. Its power stems precisely from resisting straightforward narratives, instead activating a potent field of historical references. Its contemporary appeal resides, in my opinion, from the subversion of cultural norms and social dynamics that it instigates through the deployment of something ostensibly as straightforward as a portrait. Editor: A beautiful contradiction, isn't it? Through such intimacy, this picture unlocks layers of cultural and personal stories, lingering in the mind long after the first encounter. A testament to the enduring power of symbolic imagery and a commentary on its past. Curator: Indeed. One walks away questioning not just the subject depicted, but also the lens through which we perceive ourselves.