Untitled (little girl holding telephone) c. 1950

Curator: Lucian and Mary Brown made this small photograph, only about 5x4 inches, of a little girl holding a telephone. Editor: The inverted tones give the image an eerie, dreamlike quality. It's as if she's communing with someone on the other side. Curator: There's an inherent uncanniness to photographs, especially from an era where this technology was not yet entirely domesticated. The telephone as well adds to the sense of an emerging modern world. Editor: Yes, and the inclusion of a child with this device speaks to how new technologies were being absorbed into domestic and familial life. I wonder what she's saying. Curator: Exactly! Perhaps she's simply ordering something for tea, as we see a cup and saucer on the table near her. It’s so tantalizingly unknowable. Editor: It makes you realize how much meaning we project onto the past, even in something as seemingly simple as a child’s phone call.