{
"data": {
"id": 153595,
"accession_number": "1987.129",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "South Carolina, 1930. Doris Ulmann (American, 1882\u20131934). Platinum print; image: 20.3 x 15.3 cm (8 x 6 in.); matted: 45.7 x 35.6 cm (18 x 14 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1987.129",
"current_location": null,
"title": "South Carolina",
"creation_date": "1930",
"creation_date_earliest": 1930,
"creation_date_latest": 1930,
"artists_tags": [
"Jewish artists",
"female"
],
"culture": [
"America"
],
"technique": "platinum print",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Photography",
"collection": "PH - American 1900-1950",
"type": "Photograph",
"measurements": "Image: 20.3 x 15.3 cm (8 x 6 in.); Matted: 45.7 x 35.6 cm (18 x 14 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"image": {
"height": 0.203,
"height_inch": 8,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.153,
"width_inch": 6,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0
},
"matted": {
"height": 0.457,
"height_inch": 18,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.356,
"width_inch": 14,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Written in pencil on recto of mount: \"Doris Ulmann [signed]\"; in red pencil on verso: \"475\"; in pencil: \"18 [circled]\"; \"25GR\"; \"31\"",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 310231,
"title": "The Year in Review for 1987",
"description": "The Year in Review for 1987. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 24-April 17, 1988).",
"opening_date": "1988-02-24T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 299125,
"title": "From Riches to Rags: American Photography in the Depression",
"description": "From Riches to Rags: American Photography in the Depression. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 13-December 31, 2017).",
"opening_date": "2017-08-13T04:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "Ulmann had the luxury of photographing for personal pleasure rather than for the need to earn money, and thus could choose her own subjects. She focused on communities where modern, industrialized life had not yet left its mark. In the 1920s and 1930s, she photographed Mennonite and Shaker communities in the Northeast, rural Appalachian populations, and African Americans living in the South Carolina coastal plain. Trained as a fine art photographer in the Pictorialist style, she retained its affection for soft focus and platinum prints, while most of her colleagues shifted to modernism\u2019s preference for sharp focus and gelatin silver prints.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79939514"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Turner, Evan H. \"The Year in Review for 1987.\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 75, no. 2 (1988): 30-71.",
"page_number": "p. 67, no. 96",
"url": "www.jstor.org/stable/25160017"
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 362",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1987.129",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "John L. Severance Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 153595,
"creators": [
{
"id": 1035,
"description": "Doris Ulmann (American, 1882\u20131934)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Doris Ulmann American, 1882-1934\r\n\r\nDoris Ulmann, born into a wealthy family in New York City, is known primarily for her sensitive photographs documenting the rural people of Appalachia and the South in the 1920s-30s. She attended the Ethical Culture School and Columbia University Teacher's College (1907), where she studied psychology, law, and photography and was a student of Clarence H. White. A great admirer of White, she later studied at his School of Photography (1914) and joined his organization, the Pictorial Photographers of America (1918).\r\n\tInterested in portraiture, Ulmann began to photograph members of the medical and arts communities in New York in 1918. For these and later portraits, she used a large-format view camera (6 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches) with a soft-focus lens. In the mid-1920s Ulmann began traveling to rural areas to photograph American types and traditional ways of life she believed would soon disappear. She photographed the Dunkard, Mennonite, and Shaker settlements in Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, and New England, and in 1927, accompanied by Kentucky-born folk singer John Jacob Niles, undertook her well-known series of portraits of the rural people of Appalachia, a project she continued until her death.\r\n\tFrom 1929-30 Ulmann worked with writer Julia Peterkin on a study of the Gullah people of South Carolina, which resulted in the book Roll, Jordan, Roll (1933). At the time of her death, Ulmann was involved in a collaborative project with Allen Henderson Eaton, taking photographs in Appalachia for his book Handicrafts of the Highlands (1937). M.M.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1882",
"death_year": "1934",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1987-09-21T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1930,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1930",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-01 06:51:23.384000"
}
}