Update below.

The image is striking: A stone-faced African-American woman in a spotless maid’s uniform cradles a white toddler while a stylishly dressed white woman sits nearby. Gordon Parks took the picture at the Atlanta airport in the spring of 1956.

Those few tidbits are the only things certain about this photo. Anything else is conjecture.

We don’t know the women’s names, where they’re from, their individual stories or the nature of their relationship beyond employer and employee. We don’t even know if they are still alive. Mr. Parks’s notes were minimal: He didn’t give an exact date.

We do know it is an unusual, intimate photo of race relations and economic inequality, subjects as freighted today as they were 60 years ago when the civil rights movement was gaining momentum. Though it is a quiet, in-between moment, we bring much to it, and can read much into it.

Yet we know so little about it.

We at Lens keep returning to this intriguing photo, which raises questions about race, class and relationships between women in the Jim Crow South. And every time we look at this rare color image, we want to know much more about these women.

So we are turning to you, dear readers, to help unravel this mystery. We particularly ask those of you who like history and research, as well as those who are just plain nosy, to help us crowd-source the stories of the people in this photo. Let’s use the comments section of this post to share what we find out and help each other in our joint search. You can also e-mail us at lensnytimes@gmail.com.

In the notes he sent with the film to the Life magazine lab, Mr. Parks wrote about Roll 24: “These shots were all taken candidly in the Airlines Terminal in Atlanta.” This image, he said, “shows the continuous matter of servitude which extends into the terminal around 2 a.m. Here, a white baby is held by a Negro maid while the baby’s mother checks on reservations, etc. Although the Negro woman serves as nurse-maid for the white woman’s baby, the two would not be allowed to sit and eat a meal together in any Atlanta restaurant.”

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Mr. Parks had been on assignment for Life documenting the everyday life of an extended black family living in Alabama under segregation. Though 20 photos were published, they did not reappear in public until Maurice Berger wrote about them for Lens in July 2012.

The rare transparencies had been rediscovered that year by Peter W. Kunhardt Jr., the executive director of the Gordon Parks Foundation, who found them in an unopened cardboard box in their archives. Although the photo was essentially unknown before then, it recently gained prominence when a cropped version of the image graced the cover of the book “Gordon Parks: Segregation Story,” which was published by Steidl as the catalog for the High Museum’s current show of the same name in Atlanta.

The photo — of employer and employee — was taken in the segregated South, so we know that there are privileges that the white woman enjoyed that the black woman did not. But it also shows a level of trust, said Deb Willis, a professor and author who was a friend of Mr. Parks.

“When I first encountered the photo I saw intimacy and the love and respect of the nanny holding the child in a protective manner, and then the distance that the mother has from the nanny and child,” said Ms. Willis, who heads the photography department at New York University. “The nanny is being dutiful and loyal. We know there’s an intimacy there, and a sense of trust that is part of their work environment.”

Ms. Willis also focused on the women’s clothing. “Class is also evident in the way he photographed them, a very stylishly dressed Southern woman with her necklace and hat and the African-American woman dressed in a pristine white uniform.”

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The nanny is not wearing a wedding ring — she is wearing no jewelry at all — perhaps because she was working, Ms. Willis said. She also wondered whether the African-American woman had her own children.

Anna Skillman, the owner of Jackson Fine Art gallery in Atlanta, where the image is also on display this month, has also become fixed on learning the identity of the child’s mother.

“It feels really familiar to me,” she said. “I’m from Augusta, but my family grew up in Atlanta. She could have been my grandmother’s contemporary. My grandmother was a Southern woman, an artist and pretty affluent. She died when I was fairly young.”

Ms. Skillman also studied the clothing and jewelry of the women in the photo and noted that the all-black dress might mean that she was flying to or returning from a funeral. Ms. Skillman also said she thought that the turquoise necklace might have been an uncommon choice — as opposed to pearls — and wondered whether the woman was an artist or interested in the arts.

Besides the clothing, we can see a blue and white teddy bear on a seat. When the box of transparencies was found, there was one alternate frame that showed the mother smoking a cigarette. If the infant is alive he would be about 60; the women in their 80s or 90s.

What we don’t know is a lot. The photo may be in color, but our knowledge about it is muddled.

It is up to us to clarify it. Let’s begin.

Update (Jan. 13, 2015): Several readers have called our attention to photos that offer an overall view of the airport waiting area where Mr. Parks took his image (image below). Also taken in 1956, you can see the section singled out by Mr. Parks at right in the rear right of the frame.

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