Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer Audio Exhibition

Verbal Description

Hello, my name is Nathaniel Stein, the museum’s curator of photography and curator overseeing the Cincinnati presentation of this exhibition. I will be reading the verbal descriptions of Ladder against Studio Wall with White Bowl and Ladder against Studio Wall with Black Chow (Bo-Bo) in Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer.

The photographs, Ladder against Studio Wall with White Bowl and Ladder against Studio Wall with Black Chow (Bo-Bo) are gelatin silver prints from 1959-1960. They were taken by Georgia O’Keeffe, an American artist who lived from 1887 to 1986. They are in the collection of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. Their acquisition numbers are 2006.6.1413 and 2006.6.1421

The photos, Ladder against Studio Wall with White Bowl and Ladder against Studio Wall with Black Chow (Bo-Bo), hang next to each other in this gallery. Both measure 14 and three-quarter inches by 11 and three-quarter inches and are black-and-white portrait-oriented pictures. The images are very similar in composition —both depict a wood ladder leaning against a light-colored adobe wall with its shadow casting behind and to the left. In Ladder against Studio Wall with White Bowl, a large shallow white bowl is in the lower-left corner of the picture, to the left of the ladder’s base. In the lower right corner is a scraggly bush with snow around its base. In Ladder against Studio Wall with Black Chow (Bo-Bo), the bowl is gone, and a black chow, a dog breed, rests behind and to the ladder’s right. The edge of the bush with a dusting of snow remains.

Label Text

Hello, my name is Nathaniel Stein, the museum’s curator of photography and curator overseeing the Cincinnati presentation of this exhibition. I will be reading the label Ladder against Studio Wall with White Bowl and Ladder against Studio Wall with Black Chow (Bo-Bo) in Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer.

The photographs, Ladder against Studio Wall with White Bowl and Ladder against Studio Wall with Black Chow (Bo-Bo) are gelatin silver prints from 1959-1960. They were taken by Georgia O’Keeffe, an American artist who lived from 1887 to 1986. They are in the collection of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. Their acquisition numbers are 2006.6.1413 and 2006.6.1421

O’Keeffe produced these two photographs in rapid succession. Often, she rendered light as a bright white form and shadow as a weighty dark object. By placing a white bowl to the left of the ladder in one frame and her black chow to the right in the other, O’Keeffe created startlingly different compositions through one minor change.

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