An image of a father carrying his children at the Devotion exhibit at the Widener Gallery.
Devotion: Photographs from the Collection of the Watkinson Library at Trinity College
Widener Gallery
Austin Arts Center
Trinity College
Hartford
Nov. 11, 2024
Devotion is an exhibition of 25 images from the collection of the Watkinson Library, developed between 1925 and 1981 by 11 different photographers. The exhibition covers subjects from sexuality to children playing; the images of family caught my attention most.
The pictures in the gallery aren’t labeled, so it’s hard to situate the images in time and space or give them the context that I usually try to provide in my reviews. But I think that is actually a benefit this time, because it allows the images to speak to the universal nature of adults and children, and how love manifests in similar ways across time and space.
This picture gives us an image of a father gently holding his son, who is wearing a leg brace. The brace may be a result of an injury or illness. Its appearance gives the viewer a clue that it comes from the mid-20th century. Perhaps the child suffers from polio, the disease that crippled thousands of children until it was brought to heel by a vaccine. I love how the father and son are watched over by another, the woman in the picture behind them. Even from a distance, the viewer can behold her loving gaze, offering a glimpse into the relationships that formed the foundation for this image long before it was taken.
The next picture that caught my eye was of a scene between what presumably looks like grandparents and their young grandchildren on a couch together. Even though the children appear too young to pay attention, the grandparents are reading a book to them. One of my favorite activities with my son was reading to him when he was younger. If there’s one thing that I would change about my time raising him is the false belief that a child can “age out” of being read to. I’ve seen the power of reading aloud work in a high school classroom, and witnessed first hand the kind of bond it established between students and their teacher. I wish that I’d kept reading to him and allowed him to read to me when he got old enough to do so.
This last image is the most interesting, because it’s possible that there’s no relationship between the adult and the infant at all. The woman may be a nurse, which means that it’s simply her job to care for the newborn in her arms. But that doesn’t change anything about the tenderness and love on display between the two. Parenting itself is a job- an unpaid position, to be sure, but it’s work of the hardest kind. Failure to perform the job well can result in a lifetime of physical, mental and emotional problems for a child, or in the worst cases, death. So a requirement to deliver love does not diminish the impact or intensity of the love, and this image is a testament to that fact.
There are a great deal more images in the gallery, and they’re all worth taking a look at. Photography doesn’t just capture a moment in time, but also all the moments that a picture can remind us of.
NEXT
Devotion continues at the Widener Gallery through Dec. 9, with an opening reception on Nov. 14 at 12:15 p.m.
Jamil attends a lecture which seeks to recast the collections of the Wadsworth through a Jewish identity.