A woman on a rope swing, seen from the side as she leans back into the arc. The swing is a plain plank; her hands are high on the ropes; her legs are extended, one crossing the other, in stockings and a pair of considerable heels. She is otherwise in black underwear. The setting is a stand of leafless winter trees with mist standing behind them, and a field of flattened dry grass that occupies the lower third of the picture and is entirely outside the story.
The exposure was made at the top of the swing's travel, the one moment when the sitter is neither rising nor falling and the ropes are taut. That is a difficult instant to catch and an easy one to counterfeit, and this one has the look of the real thing: the trailing foot is soft, the near hand has slipped slightly on the rope, and the face — thrown back, eyes shut, mouth open — is doing what faces do at speed rather than what they do when asked.
What the picture will not tell us is the weather. It is plainly cold: bare branches, mist in the trees, dead grass. She is dressed for none of it, and the photograph declines to acknowledge the discrepancy, treating a winter wood as though it were a warm room with better trees. This is either a serious lapse or the entire point, and the frame offers no help in deciding. It has stopped at the top of the arc and left the descent, along with the temperature, to the viewer.
A woman on a rope swing, seen from the side as she leans back into the arc. The swing is a plain plank; her hands are high on the ropes; her legs are extended, one crossing the other, in stockings and a pair of considerable heels. She is otherwise in black underwear. The setting is a stand of leafless winter trees with mist standing behind them, and a field of flattened dry grass that occupies the lower third of the picture and is entirely outside the story.
The exposure was made at the top of the swing's travel, the one moment when the sitter is neither rising nor falling and the ropes are taut. That is a difficult instant to catch and an easy one to counterfeit, and this one has the look of the real thing: the trailing foot is soft, the near hand has slipped slightly on the rope, and the face — thrown back, eyes shut, mouth open — is doing what faces do at speed rather than what they do when asked.
What the picture will not tell us is the weather. It is plainly cold: bare branches, mist in the trees, dead grass. She is dressed for none of it, and the photograph declines to acknowledge the discrepancy, treating a winter wood as though it were a warm room with better trees. This is either a serious lapse or the entire point, and the frame offers no help in deciding. It has stopped at the top of the arc and left the descent, along with the temperature, to the viewer.