This picture is an early forerunner of today’s social media images: a visual proof of bliss, effortlessly performed without even the slightest stink of production. These images are to look like genuine moments captured by a lucky photographer that happened to be at the right spot at the right time. It is an art form, the orchestrated candid: making something convincingly accidental yet perfect is not for the faint-hearted.

This is a beautiful shot without a doubt. And it is at least semi-accidental: directing a baby is impossible and the big sister is also not yet old enough to follow all commands from a photographer. But the rest is heavily controlled. It is a lovely fusion of lights and shadows, a balanced record of maternal achievement. Such harmony does not happen without skillful preparation. One might be born with a sense of good composition but trapping the light like this needs mastery both with the camera in hands and later in the darkroom. (Note the mother’s eyes.) Even the messy backdrop suggests preparedness. So much so that I wonder if it is indeed in someone’s own house or quite possibly a real studio—even if it’s the business of someone on a low budget.

I do love how no one is interested in the photographer. My favourite detail is the baby’s resigned patience, probably envisioning the next breastfeeding session. The mom is consumed by the sight of her youngest child, while the eldest is flipping through a book. I imagine her thinking how she has seen better, but it will do for the near future.

It appears to be a peaceful little community where, at this very moment, everyone is rather satisfied with their lives—or not unhappy at least. Family bliss at its best.

I started to collect vintage photographs with a very specific idea in mind. I was looking for “faceless” women, whatever the reason behind the facelessness might be: technical issues, the male gaze, motherly absorptions in an offspring, etc. This painterly piece is the perfect embodiment of what I’m looking for when it comes to my collection. A nicely timed appearance here.

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Look at this photograph of a woman with her two children. None of the three seems to be particularly invested in the taking of this photograph. Mom is busy fussing over her youngest, perhaps with the idea in mind that this moment will be eternalized and it would be nice if the baby behaves at least presentable. The baby itself has a look in its eyes as if it isn’t present at all, but far away in fantasyland. The second child, in the foreground, is playing with some kind of book or folder and doesn’t pay any attention to the photographer, even though they are not far apart. The group of three hardly fits in the frame, so the photographer almost feels like a part of the scene as a whole.

Even though this shot feels haphazard and unforced, I wonder if it qualifies as a candid shot. Or if any photograph would qualify as a candid photo, for that matter. Isn’t every photograph, in one way or another, orchestrated or staged? To quote the wise lieutenant general George Hammond in Stargate SG-1 as I have done before: “Cameras don’t just record things. They change what they record just by being there.”[1] Considering this scene, we have to take into account that the camera was present in the scene and has therefore influenced the scene.

Subconsciously, I already referred to this fact when I described the image, hinting at the mother’s concern with the act of taking the picture. Of course, objectively speaking I am unable to have any clue what she is thinking. But as you might have noticed before, that is what this blog is all about: we muse, unlimited by too much contextual information. So I look at this woman, holding her young child close to her face, affectionate but observant too, and a story forms in my mind as always when I look at a photograph. In this case, perhaps because not one of the three protagonists makes eye contact with the camera, I immediately feel some discomfort and a bit of haste. As if mom beams her thoughts at me: “Dad has finally set up the camera now, all behave and look at the camera. Don’t make faces. Is my dress okay, and my hair?”

The framing, quite crammed for the party of three, also makes the presence of the camera (or the photographer?) more tangible. As viewers, we are almost shoved into the scene, against our will, because the camera’s viewpoint is so up-in-the-face of the scene. You’d almost try to get out of the way because you feel you are in the frame, or because the photographer behind you is urging you to move. In this case, the world in the image isn’t harshly separated from ours. The lines of the “frame” between the two are severely blurred, paradoxically by the framing of the scene itself.

Following this train of thought, the question arises if there is a difference between photographs that are clearly separated from our world, either physically or content-wise, and photographs that seem to blend in more easily. For that would imply that there is also a difference in “candidness” between photographs, depending on the distance between the world of the image and our world. This distance too can be either physical, a photograph being separated from our world by a heavy frame on a clinically white wall, or due to the content. And that too, I feel, can fall into two categories; images that separate themselves from the viewer’s world (which itself can differ greatly) because of the content, and images that form a hiatus with our world because of the in-image framing. A very formal, static full-length portrait with a lot of space around it doesn’t easily blend in, as the scene in this blog’s photo does so much more easily, feeling more “taken from life”.

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[1] Stargate SG-1. Season 07, episode 17: “Heroes: part 1”. Airdate 03-04-2004.

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