Untitled (woman seated in chair with baby on lap, little boy standing at side) after 1940

Paul Gittings’s photograph shows a woman seated in a chair with a baby on her lap and a young boy standing beside her. The image is full of visual codes that speak to us about American family life. The setting appears domestic, perhaps a well-to-do home. The mother’s dress, the children’s clothing, and even the patterned chair all contribute to a sense of middle-class respectability. Consider the composition. The formal arrangement is reminiscent of portraiture in painting. We might wonder, then, about the changing place of photography in the United States. Was it becoming a more accepted means of artistic expression? Was it also being used to document and preserve ideals of family life? To get a better sense of this, one might research the history of photography as an art form, read family studies, and investigate the social history of the United States during this period. Understanding art, then, means understanding its broader social and institutional contexts.