Untitled (two women in costumes tap dancing on stage) c. 1955

Curator: This photograph by Martin Schweig, held at the Harvard Art Museums, captures two women in costumes tap dancing on stage. It looks like a memory trying to materialize. The starkness almost feels haunting, doesn't it? Editor: Haunting, yes, but also fabricated. Look at the backdrop, that odd brick pattern and ornamental ironwork—clearly a constructed stage set, drawing attention to its own artifice. Curator: Perhaps Schweig is pointing out the performative aspects of life, how we’re all, in a sense, on a stage. The inverted contrast enhances that feeling. Editor: Or maybe it's a commentary on labor? Those costumes, the stage design, the tap shoes—all products of someone's work, someone's effort to produce this moment. Curator: Interesting! I didn’t think about it that way. It's odd that the work has no title or date. It feels like it could be any time, or no time at all. Editor: That makes it even more intriguing; the lack of context shifts the focus back onto the materiality and means of production embedded within the photograph itself. Curator: I will never look at an old black and white image the same. Editor: Agreed, I’m now thinking about the labor of photography.