Untitled (portrait of girl in lacy dress embracing cat) c. 1955

Paul Gittings made this photograph, "Untitled (portrait of girl in lacy dress embracing cat)," date unknown, that's here at the Harvard Art Museums. Look at the interplay of light and shadow, the way the girl's features and the details of her dress emerge from the darkness. Imagine Gittings in the darkroom, manipulating the exposure and development to achieve this ethereal effect. It’s like a dance between intention and accident, a constant negotiation between what you envision and what the medium allows. What might he have been thinking, feeling, as he watched the image slowly materialize in the developing tray? The girl’s embrace of her cat feels tender, intimate, yet there’s also a sense of formality, a staged quality, in the composition. Gittings captures a moment of fleeting connection, but also acknowledges the artifice inherent in portraiture. It’s this tension—between spontaneity and control, intimacy and distance—that makes the photograph so compelling. It reminds me of painters like Alice Neel, who captured the essence of her sitters with brutal honesty, or maybe even Gerhard Richter, who blurred the lines between photography and painting. Artists are always in conversation, borrowing and riffing on each other’s ideas across time. Painting, photography, it's all just embodied expression.