Untitled (man sitting in chair with flowers around) 1935

Curator: Looking at this gelatin silver print, "Untitled (man sitting in chair with flowers around)" by Hamblin Studio, the first thing that strikes me is the ethereal quality. It's as if we're glimpsing a memory. Editor: It’s quite spectral, isn’t it? You immediately notice the flowers and the domestic scene, but it’s clear that the photographic processes and materials are doing a lot of work here, transforming mundane imagery into something dreamlike. Curator: Exactly! There's a tenderness to how the figure is framed by the flora, but then that dreamlike quality reminds us that time is always moving, shifting, changing the very nature of what it means to be captured. Editor: Right. Hamblin Studio really highlights photography's reliance on light and chemistry to represent reality, reminding us about the social and labor practices involved in making photographs. It's not a perfect representation, it's a constructed one. Curator: So true! I guess in the end, for me, it's a delicate dance between presence and absence, a meditation on the fleeting nature of existence. Editor: Yes, and perhaps also about the enduring nature of the photograph as a material object, as a kind of social record.