Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer

By Suzanne Révy

Years ago while I was in art school, one of my professors, the photographer William Gedney, praised a photograph, and he half-jokingly said, “it worked because there was a ladder in it.” The class declared that we should all carry ladders around with us; if a picture was not working out, we could add the ladder to the scene and find success! It was a moment of levity in what was otherwise a rigorous critique. That long ago conversation came to mind when I saw that Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) had photographed a striking ladder in several photographs included in “Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer” on view through June 12th 2022 at the Addison Gallery of American Art. In addition, there are two shows featuring O’Keeffe’s mentors: “Arthur Wesley Dow: Nearest to the Divine” and “What Next? Camera Work and 291 Magazine” with examples of Alfred Stieglitz’s photographs and publications, both on view through July 31st, 2022. 

(Featured Image) “Ladder Against the Studio Wall in Snow” by Georgia O’Keeffe, 1959-60, gelatin silver print, courtesy of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe and the Addison Gallery of American Art ©Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

“Ladder Against a Wall” by Georgia O’Keeffe, 1961, gelatin silver print, courtesy of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe and the Addison Gallery of American Art ©Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Known for her paintings, drawings and works on paper, O’Keeffe used photography to study, to observe and to sketch the light, the forms and the textures that would work their way into her paintings. That ladder was a frequent subject for photographs O’Keeffe made in and around her home at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. Each element in the photographs is graphically equivalent, whether it is that solid ladder, the light on the rungs or the shadow cast on the stucco wall behind it. She paid particular attention to design and negative space across a variety of angles. In addition to the ladder, O’Keeffe made pictures of a door that inspired her to buy her home, a winding road seen from the bedroom window, and the Jimsonweed flowers that grow there. The pictures are not complete works in the way her paintings are, and yet they are weighted in the symbolism of transcendence. 

“Salita Door” by Georgia O’Keeffe, 1956-7, gelatin silver print, courtesy of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe and the Addison Gallery of American Art ©Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

“Road out the Bedroom Window” by Georgia O’Keeffe, likely 1957, gelatin silver print, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, anonymous gift, 1977, and the Addison Gallery of Art, © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society, NYC

“Jimsonweed (Datura stramonium)” by Georgia O’Keeffe, 1964–68, black-and-white Polaroid, courtesy of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe and the Addison Gallery of American Art, © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

The exhibit was organized by Lisa Volpe, Associate Curator of Photography at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and includes a selection of pictures by Todd Webb (1905-2000). Webb helped O’Keeffe with the technical aspects of photography, and his pictures are more fully resolved as finished prints than O’Keeffe’s. But it is instructive to see his images of the artist in the field with her Leica camera. Her resulting pictures are presented among several finished paintings, and provide an insightful view of the visual and conceptual threads that drew her attention across the media she employed.

(Left) “Georgia O’Keeffe photographing the Chama River” by Todd Webb (1905-2000), 1961, printed later, inkjet print. (Right) “Chama River” by Georgia O’Keefe, 1957-61, gelatin silver prints. (Installation photograph by Suzanne Révy)

(Left) Two gelatin silver prints of Jimsonweed Flowers (Datura stramonium) c. 1964-68 by Georgia O’Keeffe, and “White Flower” an oil on canvas painting from 1929 by Georgia O’Keeffe  (installation photograph by Suzanne Révy)

O’Keeffe’s naïve pictures were printed at the local camera store, and offer a direct understanding of how she considered form, line and shifting light. She framed and reframed architectural details, landscapes, skulls and flowers in these pictures which abound with arid desert air. Both her finished paintings and drawings alongside her quickly made photographs are endowed with a spiritual and rarefied aura. There is something magical in all that she touched, raising the question, did she tap into some mystical presence of the southwest or create it herself? And how does her art shape our view of New Mexico and the American southwest today?

“Forbidding Canyon, Glen Canyon” by Georgia O’Keeffe, September 1964, black and white Polaroids, courtesy of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe and the Addison Gallery of American Art, © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

“Big Sage (Artemesia tridentata)” by Georgia O’Keeffe, 1957, gelatin silver print, courtesy of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe and the Addison Gallery of American Art, © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

“Skull, Ghost Ranch” by Georgia O’Keeffe, 1961-72, chromogenic print, courtesy of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe and the Addison Gallery of American Art, © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922) was an artist, educator and theoretician. One of his most famous students was Georgia O’Keeffe who remarked that he had “one dominating idea: to fill a space in a beautiful way” which interested her. She was adept with water color and oil paints, but Dow offered the impetus to do something novel with it. He encouraged his students to break away from representation in visual art, and embrace an abstraction that springs from the inner realms of human experience. Drawn from the Addison’s deep holdings, Arthur Wesley Dow: Nearest to the Divine takes visitors through a remarkable journey of experimentation in photography, printmaking and crafts. Notably, there are several serene landscapes which are influenced by his interest in Japanese art made in Ipswich, Massachusetts that are variously printed in cyanotype, platinum and gum bichromate. Each brim with the tension between description and abstraction.

“Flooded Meadow, Ipswich, MA” by Arthur Wesley Dow, c. 1895, cyanotype, 4 4/8″x7 5/8″ Partial gift of George and Barbara Wright, partial purchase as a gift of R. Crosby Kemper through the R. Crosby Kemper Foundation, courtesy of the Addison Gallery of American Art.

“Flooded Meadow, Ipswich, MA” by Arthur Wesley Dow, c. 1895, platinum print, 4 4/8″x7 5/8″ Partial gift of George and Barbara Wright, partial purchase as a gift of R. Crosby Kemper through the R. Crosby Kemper Foundation, courtesy of the Addison Gallery of American Art.

“Steerage” by Alfred Stieglitz,1907. from 291 Nos 7-8, September/October 1915, photogravure of Japanese vellum, 13 1/8″x10 3/8″ Gift of Georgia O’Keeffe and Elizabeth Davidson, courtesy of the Addison Gallery of American Art.

The museum is also presenting a selection of photographs and publications by O’Keeffe’s husband, Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) in What’s Next? Camera Work and 291 Magazine. His influence in promoting photography and modernist art, including O’Keeffe’s work, in the first half of the twentieth century cannot be overstated. O’Keeffe climbed a ladder held firm by her two mentors, and ultimately, eclipsed them in notoriety by being profoundly true to herself and to her work. As a result, she became both a feminist icon and a popular figure who remains relevant in contemporary culture.

“North Patio Corridor” by Georgia O’Keeffe, 1956-7, gelatin silver print, courtesy of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe and the Addison Gallery of American Art, © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

For more information: https://addison.andover.edu/Pages/default.aspx