Untitled (kids at table for birthday cake) 1944

Curator: The Harvard Art Museums hold this gelatin silver print, an untitled work by John Deusing depicting kids at a table for a birthday cake. What's your immediate take on this image? Editor: It's eerie, right? The high contrast turns a sweet scene into something almost spectral. Like a gathering of ghosts around a birthday cake. Curator: The photographic negative certainly gives it an otherworldly feel. Think of how these images, circulated within communities, construct shared memories and identities. What birthday narratives are being reinforced here? Editor: Good point. Despite the unsettling effect, there's something universally relatable in that expectation, that ritual of celebration. Maybe it's about the performance of childhood, the idealized innocence. It makes me wonder, though, what’s behind the facade. Curator: Perhaps that tension is the essence. The visible, joyous occasion, and the unseen complexities of memory and representation. I find myself curious about the untold stories captured in these children's eyes. Editor: Exactly. It's like peeking into someone else's past, distorted through time and media, leaving us with questions rather than answers.