Untitled (Collaborators, St. Tropez, France) 1944

Constance Stuart Larrabee made this photograph in St. Tropez, France, sometime in the mid-20th century. The composition is tight, almost claustrophobic, focusing on a woman having her head shaved. I look at this and think of the act of image-making as a kind of intervention—a forceful act of capture and display. The greyscale tones evoke a stark reality, while the figures surrounding the woman create a palpable tension. It’s hard not to feel a sense of unease, imagining what it must have been like to witness this scene, let alone be the one photographed. Larrabee's choice to frame the shot so intimately makes you a reluctant spectator to the woman's humiliation. Think about Goya’s “The Disasters of War,” which shares that unflinching gaze into human suffering. What does it mean to picture an image like this and what responsibility does the artist bear to the subject?