Untitled (studio portrait of mother with son and daughter, all in angled hats) c. 1940

This vintage studio portrait of a mother with her son and daughter, all in angled hats, was made by Paul Gittings. It looks like a photographic negative, where the darks are light and the lights are dark, which has this eerie quality about it. I wonder what it was like to be in a studio with those bright lights. Did the kids cry? Was it hot? I’m thinking about how each of them is dressed for the occasion in matching hats, making the whole scene feel staged and surreal. It reminds me of family portraits by Alice Neel; both capture this beautiful and melancholic psychological state. The surface is smooth, almost like glass, which flattens the image and brings the figures closer to us. Like a reverse mirror reflecting a bygone era. It’s a fascinating visual exchange across time, and it inspires my own experiments with representation and abstraction.