Untitled (Cardinal player Stan Musial at bat) 1948

Curator: This image, an untitled photograph by Jack Gould, captures Cardinal player Stan Musial at bat. It's part of the Harvard Art Museums collection. Editor: Whoa, there's something ghostly and dreamlike about this. It feels like a memory fading away, or maybe a baseball player drifting through the afterlife. Curator: That sensation of fading is interesting. Gould’s work often intersected with his passion for sports, but also with a larger, postwar American culture grappling with identity and representation. Consider how this image complicates narratives around baseball and the idealized American hero. Editor: It almost feels like an X-ray, peeling back the layers of sports fandom to reveal something more fragile beneath the surface. The drama of the stadium is muted, leaving just the stark action. Curator: Absolutely. The starkness invites us to consider the labor, the performance, and the cultural weight placed upon these athletes. It challenges a simple celebration of athleticism. Editor: I love that—it's like he's capturing not just a baseball game, but the ghost of the game itself, reminding us that even heroes are fleeting. Curator: Indeed, it speaks to larger questions about how we construct heroes and narratives around them, and what those narratives reveal about our own values and beliefs. Editor: I’ll never see a baseball card the same way again. Curator: Precisely. Gould's photograph encourages us to look beyond the surface and consider the complexities beneath.