Untitled (studio portrait, small boy in knitted cap and sweater, small wooden chair craftsman style) c. 1910

Curator: Well, this is quite the little ghost, isn't it? Editor: Indeed, this undated portrait, attributed to Durette Studio, shows a small boy standing beside a craftsman-style chair. The image is a photographic negative. Curator: The chair is a strange totem, almost as if he's laying claim to domesticity, a life he can barely grasp yet. The knitted cap makes him look so vulnerable. Editor: Children in portraits often hold symbolic objects. The chair here signifies stability and belonging, but the negative print lends a ghostly, ephemeral quality. Curator: I feel the transience of childhood acutely, looking at this. All those fleeting moments we try to pin down and inevitably lose. Editor: Yes, the interplay between the boy's small figure and the stark chair creates a powerful contrast, a sense of innocence poised on the edge of something more permanent. Curator: It's a captured fragment, a bittersweet echo. Editor: One that continues to resonate with shifting meanings.