Vernacular Modernism: The Photography of Doris Ulmann

This is the first complete retrospective of the work of photographer Doris Ulmann (1882 – 1934), treating the full scope of her production, including her early pictorialist photographs, her studio portrait production, her focus on the rural craftsmen and women of Appalachia and her work on the African American and Gullah communities of coastal South Carolina and Georgia. It will be accompanied by a catalogue published by the museum.

The exhibition consists of approximately 100 photographs by Ulmann, along with related books, crafts, and works of art (paintings and photographs) by selected contemporaries, primarily borrowed from museum and university collections. Ulmann created studio portraits in her native New York of literary and artistic celebrities but also traveled to Appalachia, the rural South and the Gullah coastal region to photograph locals and their crafts. 

Because of her variety of subjects, her work is difficult to categorize, but it has elements of pictorialism (fine art photography that often blurred its subjects to emphasize atmosphere) and documentary photography. It focuses on preservation of the American past and shows an interest in some of modernism’s concerns: a priority on form, sharper tonal contrast and quality of line, and unmanipulated prints.

Exhibition overview from museum website

Image: Doris Ulmann (American, 1882–1934) Preparing for Baptism, ca. 1929–3. Photogravure for Roll, Jordan, Roll Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

Image: Doris Ulmann (American, 1882–1934) Cheever Meaders and His Daughters, Cleveland, GA, ca. 1933. Posthumous gelatin silver print, printed by Samuel Lifshey, ca. 1934–37. 8 x 6 inches. Used with permission of the Doris Ulmann Foundation. Berea College Art Collection, Bequest of Doris Ulmann, Accession No. 150.140.3257

Whether you go or not, the exhibition catalog, Vernacular Modernism: The Photography of Doris Ulmann, is the first complete published retrospective of the work of photographer Doris Ulmann. It highlights the ways in which her work preserves the American past while shows an interest in modernism, with a focus on form, sharper tonal contrast and quality of line, and unmanipulated prints.

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