Untitled (older woman kissing young man in living room with young woman looking on) 1960

Curator: This photograph by Martin Schweig captures an intimate domestic scene. It's an undated work. I'm struck by the composition and the details of the materials in the scene. Editor: Oh, wow. I feel a peculiar sense of unease looking at this. The starkness of the image is unsettling. It's like witnessing something private, but filtered through a strange lens. Curator: The staging of the scene, the furniture, the clothing all suggest a particular time and place. This could have been shot at a time of shifting social dynamics around gender and age, and the image certainly speaks to the materiality of domesticity. Editor: The gaze of the younger woman feels almost ghostly, detached. The kiss appears staged and a little unsettling. The whole thing feels like a performance. Curator: Exactly. And the photograph itself, as a material object, is also part of this performance, an artifact of a very specific moment. Editor: It gives me the chills, to be honest. Curator: Yes, the material presence of the photo gives it a certain weight, a certain indexicality of the time. Editor: It's a disquieting glimpse into something I don't think I was supposed to see.