Untitled (two girls sitting with two dogs on ledge in yard) c. 1940

This is a photograph by Paul Gittings of two young girls sitting with two dogs on a ledge. The light is flipped, inverted, like a memory of the scene. It is a study in blacks and whites, the absence and presence of light itself. The transformation from reality to photograph relies on a chemical process, a physical reaction. The photograph doesn’t just reflect what’s there, it actively engages with it. The girls are there, but also not there. The photograph has a similar feel to a painting by Gerhard Richter, in which figures appear through a haze of abstraction. I am drawn to the area where the girl’s dress meets the foliage. It is difficult to distinguish where one starts and the other finishes. There is a beautiful ambiguity in the image. It doesn't pin anything down, which is the point. A photograph, like a painting, can be an act of not-knowing, of questioning what we see and how we see it.