Untitled (portrait of blond girl with bow in hair standing behind chair, looking left) after 1940

This is an untitled portrait of a blond girl with a bow in her hair, standing behind a chair and looking left, by Paul Gittings. It’s so simple, yet there is such incredible richness in the gradations of gray. I can imagine Gittings carefully layering the tones, much like a painter builds up layers of glazes. The backdrop, with its pattern of tiny dots, feels like a deliberate painterly decision, creating a subtle, almost vibrating field behind the girl. Look at the way her delicate features are rendered with such sensitivity and precision. There is a sense of stillness and contemplation. I’m reminded of the portraits of children by Alice Neel. Both artists capture a certain vulnerability and innocence in their subjects, but Gittings' photograph has a formality that speaks to a different era. Art, like memory, is always in conversation with the past.