Studium/ Punctum Strategies

When I started the studium/punctum assignment with the image of the woman holding the baby, the first thing that came to mind was, “where are her kids?” To highlight these racial and class elements of the image, I pasted in another image from the Robert Frank series of black children riding in a car. The image of the black children in the car is a stark contrast to the white baby, who is quite literally being babied by his black nanny. The black boys in the car seem to be unruly and unhappy, suggesting a sort of social chaos.
While the two are clearly different images, by merging them together it gets the viewer thinking about the social dynamic. Perhaps the black children would not be so unruly if they were receiving the same treatment as the white baby, but that white baby is the very reason they are not receiving that attention. The black woman, potentially their mother, has to look after the white child, so she doesn’t have time for them.
In addition, the children in the car are all looking away from the woman holding the baby, showing that the two are living in completely different worlds. The way one of the children in the car sticks up in-between the woman and the baby’s face strengthens this sentiment. It is clear that this image is a composite of two separate images, but they seem to fit together perfectly to relay the racial and social message that I got from the image.