Untitled (woman in hat and long dress seated on floor by fireplace under large portrait of girl) c. 1940

This small untitled photographic image by Paul Gittings presents a woman with a dog in a domestic interior. The tonal range is soft, a silvery palette that makes the scene feel both present and dreamlike. I’m drawn to the way the image plays with layers. The woman, the dog, the fireplace behind, and above the portrait of a girl. It's like one of those Russian dolls, where each layer contains another. The way the light falls, or doesn’t fall, obscures as much as it reveals. The portrait above the fireplace seems like an echo of the woman below. Are they the same person at different ages? Is it a mother and daughter, or is it all the same? There’s a quiet intimacy in this image, but it is also slightly unnerving, which reminds me of the work of Francesca Woodman. In Woodman's images, there’s a similar sense of the uncanny, using the body and domestic spaces to explore the complexities of identity and memory. Art isn’t about answers, more about questions.