Introduction
From the mid-1950s until the 1970s, Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) produced more than 400 photographic images, focused primarily on her New Mexico home and the surrounding landscape. After rendering the vistas of the Southwest on canvas and paper for over 25 years, the artist still sought new ways to express the beauty of the land in all its cycles and forms. Photography offered O’Keeffe a new means of artistic engagement with her world. Revisiting subjects she painted years, or even decades, earlier, the artist’s photographs explored new formal and expressive possibilities.
Her photographs reveal the same passion for nature and acute attention to composition that we see in her paintings and drawings. Through photography, O’Keeffe captured multiple momentary impressions and recorded sustained investigations over the course of days, seasons, and years. Alongside her better-known paintings and drawings, O’Keeffe’s photographs reveal her unending, unique dialogue with the natural world.
It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things.
A Life in Photography
From early family photos to travel snapshots and the number of photographic portraits—including those by her husband Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946)—Georgia O’Keeffe was no stranger to photography. Those experiences shaped her approach to the medium, but her own interests guided her practice. O’Keeffe dedicated her life to the expression of her unique perspective, seen in her clothing, home décor, paintings, and photographs. By the time she began her photographic practice in the mid-1950s, O’Keeffe brought her singular, well-developed identity and artistry to the medium.
Alfred Stieglitz
American, 1864–1946
Georgia O’Keeffe
1933
Gelatin silver print
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: The Target Collection of American Photography, museum purchase funded by Target Stores, 78.63. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Gallerist, publisher, and photographer Alfred Stieglitz made his first portrait of O’Keeffe in 1917 at the beginning of their romantic relationship. Throughout the next 20 years, he photographed her more than 300 times. Due in large part to Stieglitz’s epic portrait project and his outsized legacy, historians have assumed that O’Keeffe’s relationship to photography was passive—that of a sitter, assistant, or spectator. However, O’Keeffe’s photographs prove that she developed her own visionary practice behind the camera.
Georgia O’Keeffe’s Spotting Kit
Late 1910s–late 1940s
Various materials
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe: Gift of Juan and Anna Marie Hamilton, RC.1998.1.705. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Before the advent of digital retouching, flaws in a photographic print, such as dust spots or scratches, were covered on the print surface with a brush and spot tone dye. “Spotting” is a demanding process that requires patience, precision, and a sensitivity to tone. O’Keeffe first learned the technique while assisting Alfred Stieglitz in the late 1910s. Decades later, she used her kit again for her own photographs.
Unknown Photographer
Georgia O’Keeffe and Friends in a Boat
1908
Gelatin silver print
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe: Museum Purchase, 2014.3.239. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
During O’Keeffe’s childhood, the Eastman Kodak Company released the first easy-to-use handheld cameras and sold millions, making photography available to amateurs. As a result, family photographs, studio portraits, and snapshots taken by friends mark O’Keeffe’s earliest decades. Over the years, O’Keeffe sent snapshots to her close friends and family and continued to do so after she began her more formal photography practice in the late 1950s.
Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Stieglitz at Lake George
About 1923
Gelatin silver print
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe: Museum Purchase, Georgia O’Keeffe Photographs, 2014.3.297. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
This double exposure—produced by two images captured on the same frame of film—shows two views of the Stieglitz family property at Lake George, New York. In the vertical image, Alfred Stieglitz walks ahead on a path, while the horizontal image shows an expanse of the family’s summer residence. Even though the double exposure could have been a mistake, O’Keeffe kept the photograph for more than 60 years, suggesting the artist found the image noteworthy.
Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Washington, D.C.
Likely 1946
Gelatin silver print
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe: Museum Purchase, Georgia O’Keeffe Photographs, 2014.3.307. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Georgia O’Keeffe photographed in all seasons, embracing the changes throughout the year. While photographs of the Washington Monument surrounded by spring cherry blossoms are rather commonplace, O’Keeffe produced this unusual view during a winter visit. Undeterred by the snowy landscape, she embraced the formal elements of the scene, framing the flat, white ground in contrast to the angled, dark tree branches and the straight, gray form of the obelisk.
Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Arno Penthouse, E. 54th Street, New York
1936–42
Gelatin silver print
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe: Museum Purchase, Georgia O’Keeffe Photographs, 2014.3.267. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
For 20 years (1929–49), O’Keeffe lived in New York City but eagerly returned to her New Mexico home almost every summer. In the fall of 1931, O’Keeffe began bringing pieces of the Southwest back to the city. This image of her New York residence includes a cow skull proudly mounted on her patio door. She would pose next to it for a LIFE magazine essay titled “Georgia O’Keeffe Turns Dead Bones to Live Art.”
“Georgia O’Keeffe Turns Dead Bones to Live Art”
February 14, 1938
Published in LIFE magazine
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: Courtesy of the Hirsch Library
During her lifetime, articles in newspapers and magazines would include pictures of O’Keeffe and her paintings, making her face as recognizable to the public as her art. These articles linked O’Keeffe the woman to the landscapes and objects she painted. This LIFE essay from 1938 juxtaposes O’Keeffe’s Horse’s Head with Pink Rose (1930) with three photos of the artist handling bones from New Mexico, intimately connecting O’Keeffe’s art and daily life.
Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Seagram Building, New York
1958–65
Gelatin silver print
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, 2006.6.1290. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Like her paintings of New York, O’Keeffe’s photographs emphasize the monumentality and modernity of the city. “One can’t paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt,” she noted. This photo of the Seagram Building was taken soon after it was completed. By using a low, dramatic camera angle, O’Keeffe emphasizes architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s innovative use of vertical metal beams, presenting them as endless lines stretching into the sky.
Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Antelope
1943–46
Gelatin silver print
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe: Museum Purchase, Georgia O’Keeffe Photographs, 2014.3.291. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
On the back of this photograph, O’Keeffe added a notation: “My back yard pet.” The artist was always thrilled by sightings of the pronghorn around her Ghost Ranch home outside of Abiquiú, New Mexico. She saw all the elements of her environment as shapes that could be used in her art, even the animals. In a 1945 letter, she described the pronghorn as “long, slender” shapes topped by “sharp, black horns.”
Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Red Hill and White Shell
1938
Oil paint on canvas
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: Gift of Isabel B. Wilson in memory of her mother, Alice Pratt Brown, 91.2027. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Red Hill and White Shell embodies O’Keeffe’s experiments with the fresh colors and scale of the Southwest landscape. By enlarging a small snail shell to a monumental proportion that rivals the mesa behind, O’Keeffe aimed for aesthetic order and emotional expression. She wrote, “It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things.”
Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Untitled (Ghost Ranch Cliffs)
About 1940
Graphite on paper
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe: Gift of the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, 2006.5.165. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Like her photographs, Ghost Ranch Cliffs reveals O’Keeffe’s restless experimentation with composition. Drawing upon lessons from her teacher, Arthur Wesley Dow, O’Keeffe would frame and reframe her landscape sketches, searching for the most expressive arrangement of forms. Accustomed to framing on paper, O’Keeffe’s transition to framing with a camera was a natural one.
Todd Webb
American, 1905–2000
Georgia O’Keeffe with Camera
1959, printed later
Inkjet print
Courtesy of the Todd Webb Archive. © Todd Webb Archive, Portland, Maine, USA
For more than six decades, O’Keeffe endeavored to put her feelings for her world into visual form. She said that she tried to capture, “the unexplainable thing in nature that makes me feel the world is big far beyond my understanding—to understand maybe by trying to put it into form. To find the feeling of infinity on the horizon line or just over the next hill.”
Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Small Purple Hills
1934
Oil paint on panel
© Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2006.11. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Photography by Edward C. Robison III
The Black Place
About 1970
Black-and-white Polaroid (diffusion transfer print)
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe: Georgia O’Keeffe Papers. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
O’Keeffe’s beloved southwestern landscape was a source of continual inspiration. “I never seem to get over my excitement in walking about here—I always find new places or see the old ones differently,” she wrote in 1943. O’Keeffe’s paintings, such as Small Purple Hills, conveyed her personal pleasure in the forms and colors of New Mexico, and these same vistas would become the subjects of her photographs.
Todd Webb
American, 1905–2000
Georgia O’Keeffe in Salita Door
July 1956, printed later
Inkjet print
© Todd Webb Archive, Portland, Maine, USA
Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Todd Webb in Salita Door
July 1956, printed later
Inkjet print
© Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: Museum purchases funded by the Director’s Accessions Endowment, 2021.341, .342
During a 1955 visit, O’Keeffe’s friend, photographer Todd Webb, reinforced her interest in making photographs. Over the next few summers, Webb visited O’Keeffe in New Mexico, and the pair photographed together, often trading his cameras back and forth. Here, the friends posed for each other in O’Keeffe’s Abiquiú courtyard. “As you can see, you are a very good portrait photographer,” Webb wrote encouragingly to O’Keeffe. “I like the one of me in the doorway very much.”
Todd Webb
American, 1905–2000
Prepared Canvas, Ghost Ranch
1957
Dye transfer print
Collection of W. Burt Nelson. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Todd Webb’s summer visits strengthened their friendship and provided a mutual support system for both artists. O’Keeffe granted Webb unprecedented access to her home and artistic process, inspiring Webb to create a series of photographs that aimed to replicate the expressive abstractions that characterized O’Keeffe’s art. In turn, O’Keeffe grew increasingly interested in the potential of photography and began to photograph in earnest with Webb at her side to assist with the medium’s technical aspects.
Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Todd Webb
August 1961
Gelatin silver print
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, 2006.6.55. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Glen Canyon
August 1961
Gelatin silver print, enlarged and cut 35mm contact sheet
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, 2006.6.75. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
In August 1961, Georgia O’Keeffe explored Glen Canyon—a massive ravine spanning Utah and Arizona—with photographers Todd Webb and Eliot Porter and other friends. Inspired by the landscape, O’Keeffe sketched the views and borrowed Webb’s camera to capture unique rock formations. Webb enlarged portions of contact sheets containing O’Keeffe’s frames, as she preferred, rather than providing finished prints.
Todd Webb
American, 1905–2000
Georgia O’Keeffe Reviewing Photographs
1961, printed later
Inkjet print
Courtesy of the Todd Webb Archive. © Todd Webb Archive, Portland, Maine, USA.
Unlike most photographers, O’Keeffe was unconcerned with creating perfect photographic prints. More interested in the image than the final print, she used her instant Polaroid camera, printed her work at drugstores, or asked Todd Webb to create test prints or enlarged contact sheets of her pictures. These approaches did not align with the norms of contemporary art photography, yet they match O’Keeffe’s larger artistic practice.
Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Georgia O’Keeffe’s Notes
Likely 1957
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe: Georgia O’Keeffe Papers, Gift of the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
These notes document O’Keeffe’s early lessons in photography. Locations—“In patio,” “out window,” and “in the house”—are followed by proper apertures and shutter speeds required. Not interested in mastering the technical aspects of the medium, O’Keeffe relied on notes like these and help from others to create well-exposed images.
Access Guide Sections
Georgia O'Keeffe, Photographer is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, with the collaboration of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe. Support for the Denver Art Museum exhibition is provided by the Kristin and Charles Lohmiller Exhibitions Fund, the Adolph Coors Exhibition Endowment Fund, the donors to the Annual Fund Leadership Campaign, and the residents who support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). Promotional support is provided by 5280 Magazine and CBS4.
