Peaches, Carissa, Kee Kee, and Melissa, Cape Charles, Virginia 1999

Editor: Here we have Mary Ellen Mark’s "Peaches, Carissa, Kee Kee, and Melissa, Cape Charles, Virginia" from 1999, a gelatin silver print. I find the photograph strikingly still, almost like a staged tableau despite supposedly being captured on the street. What pulls you in when you look at this? Curator: Oh, the way their gazes diverge! That to me is electric. There's Peaches staring defiantly ahead, and the others with this incredible melancholic focus elsewhere… perhaps longing? Maybe that washing line billowing behind them ISN’T laundry; it’s a whole world of untold stories rustling in the breeze. Editor: A world of untold stories... I like that. So much is in monochrome, there’s little sense of immediate location apart from maybe rural USA with those washing lines. Curator: Exactly! Mark's realism does this dreamy, unsettling thing, right? It’s almost as if the present is being observed by the past, like an apparition. The girls crammed on that bicycle. And the way each carries a matching bag with these cartoon decals. Is there commentary here? Editor: Maybe commentary on limited resources, childhood friendship, small-town life, all universal yet very specific at the same time? Curator: Precisely! See, now I'm also wondering if that overloaded bike represents the burdens – societal or personal – placed upon them too early. Heavy stuff. Photography is a portal, wouldn't you agree? What I adore is that each time I look at it, these young ladies morph again. Editor: It's funny, I hadn't even thought of the bike being symbolic. That makes me see it in a whole new light! Curator: Good, art is for seeing and feeling again.