Untitled (portrait of little girl in dress with flower motif and bonnet) c. 1940

This image, by Paul Gittings, is an eight by ten inch print of a little girl in a bonnet. It's an odd photo, and it seems to be a negative print, which, for me, pulls the image into abstraction. I'm interested in the way Gittings is playing with surface texture here. We can tell this is a photograph and not a painting through the flatness of the space depicted. The dark shadows which render the little girl three-dimensional also emphasize the artificiality of the composition. The girl is holding a doll with both hands, it looks almost like she is praying. The doll’s head is lit up as though it is a lightbulb. It's as if the light is coming from within the doll and reflects off the surface of the child's face. I wonder if Gittings knew the work of someone like Diane Arbus, who also found ways to expose the artificiality of portraiture while evoking an emotional response. Both artists leave space for many interpretations.