Untitled (two women admiring baby) c. 1940

Paul Gittings made this silver gelatin print, ‘Untitled (two women admiring baby)’; it’s a small, intimate image, 10 by 8 inches. The conversion to negative, and high contrast, has created an unsettling feeling for me, not a smooth, neutral grey but a gritty, almost confrontational surface. I keep coming back to the weave of the wicker chair, as if a life is contained within it. And these women holding and admiring the baby, the chair now feels like an extension of their bodies. The way Gittings has captured them, so close and yet so separated, almost like sculptures against the dark negative ground. It reminds me of Alice Neel's portraits, how she had a way of capturing the raw humanity of her sitters. Art's not about perfection, right? It's about feeling, about capturing the messy, beautiful truth of being alive. It is this commitment to that sense of an ongoing conversation that makes art so damn exciting!