Untitled (portrait of a young woman) c. 1950

Curator: John Deusing gifts us this striking, unlabeled portrait of a young woman, housed here at Harvard. Editor: My first breath looking at this is about inversion. It's a photographic negative, so it feels like peering into a ghost or some nascent potential. Curator: Absolutely, the negative transforms the ordinary. The woman's gaze, though inverted, feels piercing and direct, like an oracle. Editor: It echoes something almost archetypal, the shadow self made visible. The bright eyes in a darkened face carry such psychological weight, don’t they? Curator: They do. It's less about the woman herself, perhaps, and more about the universal feminine archetype, that hidden potential you mentioned. Editor: Yes! Maybe it’s like a pre-memory. It reminds me that seeing isn’t always believing, but sometimes just a glimpse of something deeper. Curator: It certainly makes you see things differently.