Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer Audio Exhibition
Georgia O’Keeffe (American, 1887–1986), Wai‘anapanapa Black Sand Beach, March 1939, gelatin silver print, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, 2006.6.1109
10 ¾ x 8 ¾ x 1 3/8 inches (27.3 x 22.2 x 3.5 cm)
Verbal Description
Hello, my name is Emily Bauman, the museum’s curatorial assistant for photography. I will be reading the verbal description of Wai’anapanapa Black Sand Beach in Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer.
The photograph, Wai’anapanapa Black Sand Beach from March 1939, is a gelatin silver print. It was created by Georgia O’Keeffe, an American artist who lived from 1887 to 1986. It is in the collection of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. The acquisition number is 2006.6.1109
Wai’anapanapa Black Sand Beach, a black-and-white photograph, is almost square, measuring ten and three-quarter inches by eight and three-quarter inches. The top three-quarters of the image captures a web of white, foamy water coming into shore, the remnants of a crashing wave. The sand, already wet and compacted, is black in color.
Label Text
Hello, my name is Emily Bauman, the museum’s curatorial assistant for photography. I will be reading the label for Wai’anapanapa Black Sand Beach in Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer.
The photograph, Wai’anapanapa Black Sand Beach from March 1939, is a gelatin silver print. It was created by Georgia O’Keeffe, an American artist who lived from 1887 to 1986. It is in the collection of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. The acquisition number is 2006.6.1109
In many of her letters home from Maui, O’Keeffe described her desire to photograph the island’s landscape and vistas. "The black sands of Hawaii—have something of a photograph about them," she wrote. Perhaps the artist was responding to the chromatic simplicity of lacey white sea foam on black sand. Yet, there is also a notable relationship between O’Keeffe’s attraction to reframing and the constantly changing, expressive compositions created by nature as the edges of waves skim over the beach. Here, she seems to explore exactly that visual potential.