Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer Audio Exhibition
Georgia O’Keeffe (American, 1887–1986), Forbidding Canyon, Glen Canyon, September 1964, black-and-white Polaroid, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, 2006.6.1084
14 3/4 × 11 3/4 × 1 3/8 in. (37.5 × 29.8 × 3.5 cm)
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 description of Forbidding Canyon, Glen Canyon in Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer.
Georgia O’Keeffe, an American artist who lived from 1887 to 1986, took this photograph titled Forbidding Canyon, Glen Canyon, in September 1964. It is a black-and-white Polaroid. It is in the collection of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. The acquisition number is 2006.6.1084
Forbidding Canyon, Glen Canyon is a portrait-oriented black-and-white Polaroid photograph that measures 14 and three-quarter inches by 11 and three-quarter inches. In the image, two shadowed rock faces stretch from the lower center of the image to the upper left and right, forming a deep “V” shape. The sky between the cliffs is light, casting the canyon formed by two faces into shadow. In the background, just at the base of the “V,” another cliff face, lighter in color, peaks out.
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 for Forbidding Canyon, Glen Canyon in Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer.
Georgia O’Keeffe, an American artist who lived from 1887 to 1986, took this photograph titled Forbidding Canyon, Glen Canyon, in September 1964. It is a black-and-white Polaroid. It is in the collection of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. The acquisition number is 2006.6.1084
During her second trip to Glen Canyon in Utah and Arizona, O’Keeffe and her group camped for four nights at a picturesque location near Forbidding Canyon. There, the monumental form of two cliffs meeting in a "V" shape provided a spectacular view each morning. The strong morning light turned one cliff into a bright white form, while the other, cast in shade, became a dark mass. As the sun moved across the morning
sky, the shadows quickly shifted. O’Keeffe’s Polaroids tracked the changing proportions of dark and light in this dynamic scene, much like she had looked at the surf on the black sands of Maui 25 years earlier.