Untitled (photograph of Bachrach photo of child with doll in doorway) c. 1940

Paul Gittings made this untitled photograph of a photograph, of a Bachrach photo, of a child with a doll in a doorway, and it’s got such a wonderfully layered sense of seeing. The grainy texture, the way the light sort of flattens the space, it’s all about process, about the making of an image. You can almost feel the artist playing with the focus and exposure. There is a kind of blurriness that makes the child and her doll seem less like portraits and more like impressions of figures. It is as if they are about to dissolve into the background. The doorway itself becomes a frame within a frame. Look how the arches echo each other, one leading into the light, the other receding into shadow. It makes me think of artists like Gerhard Richter, who are interested in the way photography can both capture and distort reality, how it can create a sense of distance even as it invites us to look closer. In the end, art is always a conversation, a way of seeing that keeps evolving.