Grindelwald (Zw.) 21 Februari 1939 Possibly 1939

Curator: There's something profoundly haunting about this photograph. Editor: Indeed. What immediately strikes me is its intimacy, despite the fact that we are looking at what seems like an anonymous child. There is also an almost clinical sense of isolation, and even with the child there the space feels so utterly, completely vacant. Curator: The photograph, "Grindelwald (Zw.) 21 Februari 1939," is attributed to an unknown photographer and is captured on a gelatin-silver print. There's a starkness in its tones that adds to the quiet intensity, doesn't it? The child in the pram feels almost entombed. Editor: And Grindelwald… the date implicates so much, doesn't it? Switzerland, February 1939. The precipice of unimaginable horror in Europe. It begs the question, whose child is this, and what became of them in the chaos to come? Was this taken for family, or did this photo intend to show us something larger? Curator: Consider how a photograph like this, even devoid of overt symbolism, accumulates symbolic weight by virtue of its date. Children, throughout time, have always acted as figures of vulnerability, of innocence at risk. Look closely at how the frame of the baby carriage encloses the figure, it looks less like transport and more like containment. I think it highlights that vulnerability and heightens it, rendering the subject captive within its own life. Editor: Exactly. I feel as though there's a deliberate, conscious choice to leave the baby as the image's focus—rather than zooming out and accounting for all that surrounds it. It begs us to ask what we see as worth preserving, and how that choice might doom that thing itself. Looking at it with the knowledge of the encroaching war, this photograph carries a huge weight of sorrow for unrealized futures. Curator: It does, doesn't it? I appreciate the quietness with which it asks these questions, resisting sentimentality yet somehow brimming with pathos. It makes you consider the personal against the grand narrative. Editor: And in its unsentimental capturing of this solitary scene, a dialogue begins concerning memory and historical context and what should have happened compared to the awful unfolding that did occur. Thank you for bringing that to the forefront. Curator: Likewise. Its simplicity really allows an expansive array of thought to take flight.