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To look at the portrait of an individual is to invite oneself to all sorts of speculations as to who they were, how they would have spoken, what they would have thought. --Phillip Stokes, The Family Photography Album: So Great a Cloud of Witnesses I hold a postcard in my hand. [1] One side of the card is a photograph in which a neatly groomed woman in fine dress is seen in profile. Her body barely enters the right side of the picture as she leans gently and lovingly, but also intently and perhaps even somewhat obsessively, toward a young girl who is seated just left of center. Although the woman stands just a few inches away, the child obviously does not perceive this closeness as an invasion of her personal space. In fact, the child's lack of self-consciousness suggests that she is quite used to being watched by this woman. Even though she stares right at the child, the woman's face seems rather expressionless, as though the child was not the real (or at least only) object of her thought. The figures in this photograph simply seem to assume the presence of each other; this dynamic of subtle interdependency leads me to believe that their bond is familial and most likely that of mother and child. (1) [pi] Even though the child is dressed up and formally posed, she does not seem self-conscious about being photographed. Even in her highly contrived pose, she appears more natural than her adult companion. The child is occupied by the moment at hand and absorbed by a spectacle we are not privy to; the spectacle taking place outside of the photographic frame. Her nonchalance toward the camera provides a strong contrast to the woman's self-conscious pose. Where the child is unaware of the importance of this memorializing moment, the woman is wholly invested in this photographic ritual, an investment that occupies her mind with the future, albeit a future already becoming the past. Although the woman's eyes are fixed on the little girl, her mind's eye is anticipating the photographic image to be. [pi] I do not know the woman pictured on this postcard but I think I understand her motives for taking, or having this photograph taken. This photograph owes its existence to the fact that it could do what the mother ultimately could not: it remembers her child for her, forever and perfectly. Although she appears totally absorbed in the moment, the intensity of her gestures lead me to believe that she was also projecting far into the future, to a time when both of them would be gone and this photograph--if it happened to survive--could continue to tell their story and preserve their bond. Even though the child is right in front of the woman, she resists the urge to touch and interact with the child. Could this distance--more conceptual than real--be the mother's acknowledgement and foreshadowing of their inevitable separation? It is as if touching her daughter would make the child too real, too material, for a photographic performance that is ultimately not about life and presence, but rather about separation, a bsence and death. This tension is encapsulated by the gesture of the mother's left hand, which tentatively yet not self-consciously grazes the hem of the girl's dress. The dress, like the future photograph, serves as an indexical trace of the girl; both will bear the particular imprint of her body (even after the dress is outgrown, the mother is no longer depended upon, and the image falls into the hands of a stranger). This simple touch anchors the mother to the moment of posing and gives her a tactile (though mediated) relationship to the girl. However, this transitory touch is not enough to overcome the overwhelming effect of the mother's largely self-conscious pose, a pose that ultimately prefigures this moment as a photographic image. In this image I see a mother anticipating her daughter growing up. This constitutes their first separation, a reality painful enough, yet one that will only be doubled by an even more painful separation: death. …
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