Arizona Landscape
Artist
Frederick Sommer
(American, born Italy, 1905 - 1999)
Date1943; printed ca. 1970
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 7 5/8 x 9 1/2 inches (19.37 x 24.13 cm)
Framed: 16 1/8 x 17 7/8 inches (40.96 x 45.4 cm)
Framed: 16 1/8 x 17 7/8 inches (40.96 x 45.4 cm)
Credit LineGift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.
Object number2005.27.4415
InscribedSigned and titled
Signed in artist's hand
Back of Mount
On View
Not on viewCollections
Terms
Sommer's photographs were a product of his uniquely broad interests in art, literature, philosophy, and science, and his passion for both "straight" photography and Surrealism. In the early 1940s, he used his large 8x10-inch camera to make radically unconventional pictures of the Arizona desert. He eliminated the horizon line and filled his frame with meticulously sharp vistas of rock and cactus. These pictures have a strange pictorial duality: at once static and agitated. By deliberately avoiding traditional compositional devices, these photographs suggest new ways of thinking about both pictures and nature.
Copyright© Frederick & Frances Sommer Foundation
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