Untitled (two girls in matching dresses and brown ringlets seated together and leaning on table in front of them) after 1940

Paul Gittings captured this photographic image of two young girls in matching dresses, seated together, sometime in the mid-20th century. I love imagining what the artist might have been thinking when composing the image. It has a casual sort of formality – the way the girls lean in, elbows on the table, close together, but not quite touching, the contrast between the dark curls and the light bows. It must have taken time to arrange them just so! How do you create an image that appears natural, and spontaneous, yet is entirely constructed? Like a painter layering brushstrokes, the photographer has carefully balanced light and shadow to create depth and form. There is so much ambiguity in a work like this, so many ways we could choose to read it, which is what makes it so endlessly interesting. It reminds me that, like painters, photographers are always experimenting, always pushing the boundaries of their medium, in an ongoing conversation across time.