Title
Sisters of the Holy Family CourtyardArtist
Ulmann, Doris (American, 1882-1934)Date
1931Process
PlatinumImage Size
19.7 x 14.8 cmSheet Size
36 x 28.5 cm (mount)
Perhaps what is so fine about Miss Ulmann’s pictures, apart from their somewhat haunting and mystery-laden quality, their gentle, luminous and suggestive reflection of a particular kind of life, is a certain timelessness she has managed to capture. For all the specifics we are given, there is an almost otherworldly aura to her camera’s creations; it is so much, and so ironically, the light she has an eye for, the shadows, the shades of the day’s truth, literally as well as figuratively. Haziness, duskiness, a moment of glow, the alternations of a veil and a burst of sunshine-these, I would think, are Miss Ulmann’s obsessions. She saw the confusions about her, and tried to give them to us as candidly as possible: the darkness and the light in several senses of those words. Coles p. 84.
Sisters of the Holy Family courtyard, penciled signature "Doris Ulmann" lower right, printed by the artist, original board with verso having penciled title and red "11".
Reproduced / Exhibited
Doris Ulmann’s Passionate Portraits of America, Hopewell Museum, Paris, KY, February 10, 2001 to May 30, 2001
See Plate 113, page 122
References
Jacobs, P. W. (2001). The life and photography of doris ulmann. University Press of Kentucky. July 12, 2024, p. 84
Ulmann, Doris, John Jacob Niles, and Jonathan Williams. 1976 1971. The Appalachian Photographs. Highlands, N.C: Jargon Society.
Coles, Robert and Aperture, Inc. 1974. The Darkness and the Light. Millerton, N.Y: Aperture.
Georgia Museum of Art. 2018. Vernacular Modernism : The Photography of Doris Ulmann. Athens, Georgia: Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia.
J. Paul Getty Museum. 1996. Doris Ulmann : Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum. Malibu, California: J. Paul Getty Museum.
Lovejoy, Barbara. “The Oil Pigment Photography of Doris Ulmann.” University of Kentucky, Publisher Not Identified, 1993.
Gillespie, Sarah Kate. Vernacular Modernism: The Photography of Doris Ulmann. Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, 2018.
