Untitled (portrait of two children) c. 1945

Curator: This intriguing photographic image, held by the Harvard Art Museums, is simply titled "Untitled (portrait of two children)" by John Deusing. Editor: It’s striking how the inverted tones create such an ethereal, almost haunting, quality. Curator: Absolutely. Consider the cultural norms around portraiture when this was made. Clothing, posing, even the backdrop, all worked to construct a specific narrative. Editor: And the material itself – a photographic negative – speaks to a whole process. From the glass plate, the darkroom alchemy, to the final print, labor is embedded in every stage. Curator: We must also consider these children. Their gender, their social class, the power dynamics inherent in that relationship. What stories do their faces, even inverted, tell us about childhood in that era? Editor: For me, that tension between the sharp details of their clothing and the soft glow of the negative, hints at the complex relationship between materiality and representation. Curator: Indeed. It offers a powerful reminder that even seemingly straightforward portraits are imbued with layers of cultural and historical meaning. Editor: And how the act of creating, developing, and even archiving leaves its own unmistakable mark.