The New and the Old (Greenwood Plantation) c. 1946

Editor: So, this black and white photograph, "The New and the Old (Greenwood Plantation)" by Clarence Laughlin presents such a strange, almost dreamlike image. It's haunting. What’s your take on it? Curator: It’s like looking through a keyhole into a layered past, isn’t it? That swirling foreground almost feels like time itself, distorting our view of the plantation home. It makes me wonder, what is time doing to our memory of these places? Editor: The distortion really gets to me! It's as if the past is both present and unreachable. Curator: Exactly! And that statue’s gesture, pointing towards the house… is it accusation? Acceptance? Or something in between? Maybe the gesture holds the key to understanding the relationship between the old and the new. Editor: I never thought of the gesture as a question. Now I see even more layers. Curator: It’s a conversation, isn’t it? One that keeps changing the more we look.