Label Text:
The relaxed focus and warm tonality of this photograph, enhanced by Ulmann’s choice of the platinum medium, demonstrate her training in Pictorial photography—a style emphasizing a picturesque and painterly aesthetic—under Clarence H. White at Teachers College of Columbia University, and, upon its opening in 1914, the Clarence H. White School of Photography.
Ulmann captures the scene of a man laden with heavy coils of rope, documenting his rigorous labor and drawing attention to the fact that, under his heavy load, he stands strong. Ulmann’s reverent treatment of her working-class subject reflects the principles of the Ethical Culture Society, such as socioeconomic parity, to which her family subscribed. In that regard, this photograph presages Ulmann’s best-known projects, which document Gullah culture of the South Carolina islands and the mountain communities of Appalachia.
-MD, 2011
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