Untitled (portrait of little girl in sundress between her parents) c. 1940

This photographic negative of a portrait of a family, including a little girl in a sundress, was made by Paul Gittings and is now kept at the Harvard Art Museums. Looking at this image, I can almost feel the cool, smooth surface of the photographic plate, that captured this moment in time. Imagine the artist, Gittings, carefully arranging the family, maybe coaxing a smile from the little girl, adjusting the lights just so. What was he thinking as he captured this family portrait? The figures are framed by dark lines that almost seem to embrace them, like the edges of a memory. The mother, father, and daughter seem like figures from a play. The dad is sitting very formally on a box with a suit and tie, looking straight ahead. The little girl is held in her mother's arms. The figures captured in this image evoke both a sense of nostalgia and a feeling of distance, like peering into a world that is both familiar and foreign. It reminds us that photography, like painting, is always a kind of fiction, an interpretation of reality rather than a simple reflection. I think all artists are inspired by an ongoing exchange of ideas across time, which helps inspire creativity.