Untitled (newlywed couple leaving house as woman throws rice on them) 1930 - 1945

Curator: This photograph by Martin Schweig captures a newlywed couple, rice raining down as they exit a house into the world. Editor: It’s lovely, yet the composition is intriguing; a sense of both celebration and constraint in that doorway. The rice, such a basic thing, becomes almost performative, like the confetti of its day. Curator: Schweig, based in St. Louis, appears to have captured a common scene, yet the materials of the image—the paper, the developing chemicals—speak to a moment of mass-produced memory-making. Editor: Mass-produced maybe, but each grain of rice had to be farmed, processed, distributed. All that labor for a fleeting gesture. It makes you wonder about the economics of their joy. Curator: You know, maybe that's the point! The abundance, the hope… Editor: Maybe, maybe. Still, it's a photograph, and it has to be viewed through the lens of both representation and production. Curator: Absolutely. Both the concrete, and the symbolic are present.