Shining Girl

This holiday dinner photograph, by an amateur photographer, would be unremarkable — except for the intensity of the young girl in the right foreground. While the rest of her family displays the expected level of awkwardness and distraction, she engages the lens utterly. She is ready for her close-up. The girl next to her has turned away from the camera, as if to cede the stage to her companion. 1930s or early 1940s, to judge from the hairstyles. A remarkable photograph, one that says a lot about America, and the power of the lens.

And on the horses swiftly going by / Are shining girls who have outgrown this play / In the middle of the flight, they let their eyes / Glance here and there, and near and far away.

— Rainer Maria Rilke: Das Karussell (The Carousel) 1906.

8” x 10”