In this picture we can see two characters. two people with different lives, different social statutes different ages, and different race. As different as they can be. Here we can see the face of a woman probably in her early 50’s. A woman with a distant stare. We can see deference in her face and almost hear her letting scape a sight of resignation. Accepting that this was her life and there is nothing she can do about it. The bag under her eyes contain the sleepless nights and the sixteen daily hours of hard work and dedication. The nights in which the baby she is holding in her arms hasn’t let her sleep and the times the baby sleeps she is not allowed to rest. Her duty as a nanny is to always be serving the house and taking care of the baby.
Her eyes are focused in the distant probably she is thinking about her own daughter, her own family and kids she can’t see or hold or take care at night when they are sick. she isn’t allowed to sleep somewhere else that it isn’t the family’s house. Maybe she is thinking about wanting to play with her own daughter when she is playing with a child that is not hers. Her heart full of guilt, feeling the betrayal she is committing to her own daughter by giving attention more to someone else’s baby rather than her own. But it is at the end for ten dollars a month. Ten dollars to encompensate the time taken away from her family. To give them a place to live, that would cost her four dollars a month, to feed and clothe herself and her kids. You could almost hear the air scaring her lungs as she tries to keep going doing her job. She probably had thought about quitting or asking for a race on her payment. The is a little broken smile, more like a gesture of thinking ridiculous thoughts like that. This is not the cinderella story. Here there isn’t anyone who would stand for the rights of black people. There isn’t any labor union or organization a back person could go or protest for higher payments and if she trhearnedt to quit her job 10 more women would appear to take her position. After all this the baby she is holding is innocent. She doesn’t know what is going on in society but she knows that her parents will prohibited her to call her Miss or Mrs or show any type of respect. she knows that by the time the baby starts speaking her first words the parents would address this specifically and make sure she learns the distinction between them. The distinction between colors, black and white, the ring and the yang, the good and the bad. No matter how they teach their kids to call them, their own duty is to answer and obey.
But there is another face, another character in this composition. There is the baby that is being held by the woman with the distant glaze. The baby resembles the same distant look. Also a look of resignation. This baby probably doesn’t know what is going on, more than missing her mother or wanting to be held by her mother. A human being in her most basic root of knowledge. She doesn’t know human language yet or what colors are. A baby that is innocent to what society has develop to be. This baby has seen this woman, who probably brestfeeded her, everyday of her life. She plays with her, She baths her, She puts her to sleep and feed her. She probably has an attachment and love for this woman, even if she doesn’t know the definition love yet. But time out of this photography will pass and eventually, this baby will forget all the hours of dedication that this woman gave her, all the hours of playing in the park and all the shared moments that. Time will pass and it will feel as ephemeral as the flash of this picture, that captured her innocence. She will grow and this picture will be the only evidence that one day she shared something with this woman. People and the system of society around her will teach her the distinction between white and black, between skins, between races and power. She is sitting in a woman’s arms not knowing that she will have and already has a better life than the woman she plays everyday with. She will learn that her skin, which she doesn’t know what it is yet, is what makes her superior according to society. There is no clear background of this photography more than a blurry side walk and cars. The irony of the use of black and white photography makes you focus only on the two characters making the composition.
But there is also a third character in this photography, an intruder that either of them know. A character with a different lifestyle that the one of the two in the picture. He was born in November of 1924, he is an artist, documentarist, filmmakers and photographer. In 1955 Robert Franck went across America and took around 28,000 pictures and created the book “The Americans” Robert frank wasn’t in front of these two character in the picture with only his passion for photography. He was there because he wanted to show the world the mentally of American society, the reality behind the beautiful dream, the difference between the apparent reach of freedom and equality since slavery was abolished with the racial segregation and class separation. During these two years of recompilation of American, Robert Frank met Jack Kerouac who joined the project by adding text to the images. The book was first published in Paris in 1958 until America finally decided to publish the book in 1959 but without the text. Soon the book became part of the teaching books of art history. The life of these three characters developed in three different directions. Robert Frank became recognized winning several prizes for his photographies. The two other characters continued their lives and society moved on.
Elsa Cristina 