Untitled (baby on chair with doll) 1950

Curator: This image, currently titled "Untitled (baby on chair with doll)," comes to us from the collaborative work of Lucian and Mary Brown. It's a modest-sized gelatin silver print currently held at the Harvard Art Museums. Editor: It feels domestic, somehow both intimate and unsettling. The stark tonality definitely heightens the tension—what do you make of it? Curator: The photograph offers a glimpse into mid-century domesticity, doesn't it? But I'm interested in the societal expectations imposed on women at the time—motherhood, domesticity, the gaze... it seems almost a critique of idealized family life. Editor: Agreed. And I notice the details of the set up—the fabric of the chair, the floral drapes, which gives such insight into the material culture of the era, and how those elements contribute to the making of a home and, in this case, a family portrait. Curator: The photograph certainly leaves us with questions about performance, and the pressures of creating an image of the perfect nuclear family. Editor: Absolutely, the materiality offers context. It shows the making of a picture while, I think, questioning the making of its subject.