Untitled (studio portrait of girl in long dress with straw hat over arm standing on shag prop) c. 1940

This is an undated studio portrait of a girl with a hat, made by Paul Gittings. Gittings was a portrait photographer who was active in Texas, and later New York, from the 1920s to the 1960s. He produced images for the wealthy, who wanted to record and disseminate their status and respectability, at a time when America was going through tremendous social and economic change. Portraits like this one were intended to embody ideals of family, beauty, and material success. In this photograph, the girl is posed with a confident gaze, but, perhaps, also a taughtness of body language, suggesting a young age burdened by the trappings of wealth. Further research into the Gittings studio might include looking at the archives of studios themselves, alongside magazines and newspapers of the time, to examine the way that these idealized images functioned in relation to the rapidly evolving social and political landscape of the 20th century.