Untitled (three children posed with goat and dog outdoors) 1961

Curator: The first thing that strikes me is this otherworldly pallor, like a memory bleached by the sun. Editor: Well, it’s an inverted black and white photograph, attributed to Martin Schweig, showing three children posed outside with a goat and a dog. It's modest in scale, about 5 x 4 inches. Curator: Inverting the tones feels deliberate, though—as if the children and animals are emerging from a dreamscape. The lack of a specific date only enhances that sense of timelessness. Editor: It's easy to get lost in the feeling of it, but I wonder about the material reality. Film processing was never a neutral process, so what kind of labor and chemistry went into this particular aesthetic? Curator: Perhaps the transformation is the point. The alchemical shift from ordinary to something haunting and strange. Editor: That's the magic, isn't it? Taking the everyday materials and processes, and revealing the uncanny within.