Untitled (two girls and dollhouse) c. 1950

Editor: This photograph, "Untitled (two girls and dollhouse)" by Lucian and Mary Brown, is quite small. It features two young girls and their dollhouse. It feels like a captured memory. What symbols or meanings do you find resonate within this image? Curator: Notice the dollhouse, a symbol of domesticity, but also control. The girls, themselves like dolls, engage with it. Consider how childhood innocence intertwines with societal expectations, and how the cultural memory of ‘play’ is preserved within it. What does the presence of the doll *inside* the dollhouse signify? Editor: It's like a world within a world, mirroring and magnifying the girls' own lives. I hadn't thought about the power dynamics involved in playing house. Curator: Indeed. These images resonate with our own remembered childhoods and their layered meanings.