Untitled (portrait of young boy standing with legs apart on studio prop, hands in pockets of jumpsuit) after 1940

Paul Gittings created this black and white photograph of a young boy, sometime in the twentieth century. The child's posture, with hands tucked into his pockets and legs spread apart, is an assertion of independence. Set against an abstract studio backdrop, the child stands on what appears to be a small grassy knoll. There's a staged quality to the scene, reminiscent of theatrical portraiture. The boy's dark, utilitarian jumpsuit and cap point to the visual codes of mid-century childhood. There is a self-conscious tension between innocence and a kind of premature worldliness. The context for understanding an image like this lies not just in the formal elements, but in the history of photographic portraiture, and the commercial studios that perpetuated certain ideals. By researching the archives of studios like Gittings, and tracing the social history of childhood, we can better understand this image’s complex relationship to the world in which it was created.