O'Keeffe Access Guide: Reframing

Through the lens of her camera, Georgia O’Keeffe saw her environment as an array of shapes and forms. Moving from right to left, angling the camera from high to low, or turning it both vertically and horizontally, she reorganized these shapes within the picture frame as she experimented with formal arrangements. This serial reframing is characteristic of O’Keeffe’s approach to photography.

A black and white photograph of a single white flower against large leaves.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Fence Morning Glory (Ipomoea ochracea)
March 1939
Gelatin silver print
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, 2006.6.1111. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

In 1939, O’Keeffe accepted an invitation to Hawaii to produce paintings for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company. Her “Hawaii snaps,” as they are labeled on the envelope in which they were found, capture subject matter that is quintessentially O’Keeffe—flower blooms and dramatic landforms.

A series of three black and white photographs of volcanic rock formations set against choppy water. Each photo has slightly different framing but features the same scene.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986

Lava Arch, Wai‘ānapanapa State Park
March 1939

Gelatin silver prints
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, 2006.6.1100, 2006.6.1101, 2006.6.1105. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Though a handful of scattered snapshots made before 1939 can be attributed to O’Keeffe, her trip to Hawaii that year produced her first significant body of photographs. From this group of images, you can see O’Keeffe already framing and reframing the same landscape. These early photographs reveal that reframing was a method she intuitively brought to the medium and not one she learned from others nearly two decades later.

A black and white photograph of O’Keeffe standing on a volcanic Hawaiian beach.

Harold Stein
Danish, dates unknown
Georgia O’Keeffe in Hawaii
March 1939
Gelatin silver print
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe; Gift of the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, 2006.6.755. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Harold Stein, a local Boy Scout troop leader and passionate amateur photographer, met O’Keeffe’s plane when she landed on Maui. O’Keeffe borrowed Stein’s camera to take the 16 extant photos of the island. The small size of the prints—each with hand-cut, irregular edges—suggests that they were contact printed and cut apart before she left. Stein, in turn, captured O’Keeffe standing in front of the landforms that appear in her photographs.

A set of two black and white photographs of a volcanic Hawaiian shoreline with crashing waves. The photos feature the same scene but have subtle differences.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986

Natural Stone Arch near Leho‘ula Beach, ‘Aleamai
March 1939

Gelatin silver prints
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, 2006.6.1097, 2006.6.1102. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

O’Keeffe’s careful framing of only four elements—arch, water, sky, and coast—produced these subtly different compositions. The image on the right includes more sky, resulting in a composition with balanced registers of natural elements. The image on the left includes more of the shore, linking the rocky arch and the coastline. These small variations demonstrate the artist’s interest in exploring relationships of forms

A colorful painting of a tropical coast with aqua blue water, light blue skies, and fluffy white clouds. The volcanic rocks form a bridge that juts out into the wavy water.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Black Lava Bridge, Hana Coast No. 2
1939
Oil paint on canvas
Honolulu Museum of Art: Gift of the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, 1994, 7893.1. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

O’Keeffe’s small oil painting Black Lava Bridge, Hana Coast No. 2 depicts the same Hawaiian vista as her nearby photographs. The painting’s lateral format—rather than the square format of the photographs— emphasizes the horizontality of the bridge and its extension in the water. Without broad swaths of either sky or coastline, the painting emphasizes the bold and unique stretch of the rock formation.

A set of two black and white photographs of foamy ocean water lapping onto a black sandy beach. The images vary slightly.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986

Wai‘ānapanapa Black Sand Beach
March 1939

Gelatin silver prints
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, 2006.6.1108, 2006.6.1109. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Many of O’Keeffe’s letters home from Maui describe not only the sights of the island but also her desire to photograph those vistas. “The black sands of Hawaii—have something of a photograph about them,” she wrote. The constantly changing line of surf and sand appealed to an artist who utilized photography to explore different compositions.

An open magazine with pages. The left page displays an article with the title “Corn: Hot and Hearty.” The right page depicts a vibrant O’Keeffe framed painting of tropical leaves.

An open magazine with black and white print and several black and white photographs amongst the print.

Dole Pineapple Juice Advertisement
November 1940
Published in Women’s Home Companion, vol. 67, no. 11
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: Courtesy of the Hirsch Library

“Pineapple for Papaya”
February 12, 1940
Published in TIME magazine, vol. 35, no. 7
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: Courtesy of the Hirsch Library

In 1939 O’Keeffe accepted an invitation to Hawaii from advertising company N. W. Ayer and Son to produce paintings for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, part of Dole. She traveled for nine weeks from Honolulu to neighboring islands but never painted a pineapple. “It is certainly a different world—and I am glad I came,” she wrote to her husband, Alfred Stieglitz. Upon her return to New York, Dole sent her a pineapple to finish her assignment.

A set of four black and white photographs of the dark doorway of an adobe building. The photographs are taken from various distances and angles of the same doorway.

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Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986

Garage Vigas and Studio Door
July 1956
Gelatin silver print
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, 2006.6.1393. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Garage Vigas and Studio Door
July 1956
Gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Anonymous Gift, 1977, 1977.657.1. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Garage Vigas and Studio Door
July 1956
Gelatin silver print
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, 2006.6.1395. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Studio Door
July 1956
Gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Anonymous Gift, 1977, 1977.657.6. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

In this group of photographs, the artist tested how the arrangement of forms can compress the scene into two dimensions. O’Keeffe photographed her studio door from inside her garage, located across the open courtyard. By raising her camera to include more or less of the garage ceiling—with its linear pattern of vigas (joists) and latillas (sticks)—O’Keeffe created compositions that resemble flattened planes of forms, rather than three-dimensional views.

A set of two vibrant still life paintings of a bleached white seashell partially obscured at the bottom, a tropical green leaf in the top right, and a metallic gray shingle in the background.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986

Shell and Old Shingle No. I
1926

Shell and Old Shingle No. III
1926

Oil paint on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: Alfred Stieglitz Collection—Bequest of Georgia O’Keeffe, 1987.535, 1987.537. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

These paintings demonstrate the same reframing that O’Keeffe explored with her camera. By changing the format, angle of view, and the focus, O’Keeffe created different works—one resembling a still life and the other a landscape—from the same elements. Like her photographs, O’Keeffe’s emphasis was the relationship between forms. “They fascinated me so that I forgot what they were except that they were shapes together—singing shapes,” the artist explained.

A black and white photograph of the darkened external door to O’Keeffe’s studio. A large sagebrush is in the left-center foreground and partially obscures our view of the door. A ladder rests against the adobe wall to the right of the door.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Salita Door, Patio
1956–57
Gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: William Lane Collection. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

On many occasions, O’Keeffe claimed that the dark salita door—the door leading into her salita, or sitting room—was the reason she purchased her Abiquiú home. She depicted this door in her work with notable frequency, producing 23 paintings and drawings from 1946 until 1960 and numerous photographs beginning in 1956. “It’s a curse—the way I feel I must continually go on with that door,” she noted.

A black and white photograph of the darkened external door to O’Keeffe’s studio. A large sagebrush is in the foreground and partially obscures our view of the door. The reflection of O’Keeffe can be seen in the window in the left of the frame.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Patio and Zaguan
1956–57
Gelatin silver print
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, 2006.6.1403. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

The multiple doors and windows of O’Keeffe’s central patio in her Abiquiú home lent themselves to experiments in reframing. Moving the camera left and right, up and down, or slightly changing position resulted in a wide variety of different compositions. Here, the artist turned toward the zaguan entry—a central passage connecting the exterior to an interior courtyard. O’Keeffe’s reflection, visible in the window, captures the artist carefully framing the scene.

A set of two black and white photographs, one portrait and the other landscape, of a long desert dirt road with visible tire tracks. The road stretches far off into the horizon.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986

Road
1957

Gelatin silver prints
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, 2006.6.1308, 2006.6.1309. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Changing her compositions by turning the camera both vertically and horizontally, O’Keeffe created different photographs of a dusty road. In the vertical composition, the faint horizon at the top edge gives the road a longer and leaner appearance, emphasizing its linear shape. In contrast, the horizontal photo emphasizes the broad swath of land, making the road just another element in this stark vista.

A minimalist line drawing on paper with simple shapes that create an outline of a canyon.

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Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Untitled (Palo Duro Canyon)
1916–17
Graphite on paper
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe: Gift of the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, 2006.5.42. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Arthur Wesley Dow, O’Keeffe’s most influential teacher, suggested, “Try only to cut a space finely by landscape shapes; the various lines in your subject combine to enclose spaces, and the art in your composition will lie in placing these spaces in good relations to each other.” O’Keeffe applied these lessons to her drawings of Palo Duro Canyon. While she did not learn to photograph from Dow, his instruction seeded an understanding of photography’s capacity for reframing.

A set of three black and white photographs of Big Sage taken from slightly different angles.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986

Big Sage (Artemisia tridentata)
1957

Gelatin silver prints
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, 2006.6.1296, 2006.6.1293, 2006.6.1291. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

In 1957 O’Keeffe produced these three photographs of Big Sage (Artemisia tridentata) near Barranca, New Mexico. She moved her camera with each capture, altering the arrangement of the forms. As a result, the images are different, though each contains the same basic elements.

Three black and white photographs which together form a panorama of the Canyon de Chelly in Arizona.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986

White House Overlook
July 1957

Spider Rock
July 1957

Gelatin silver prints
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, 2006.6.1301, 2006.6.1300, 2006.6.1303. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

In July 1957, O’Keeffe visited Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, and produced three images at White House Overlook. Together, the three images form a panorama, moving from the starburst form of a crag, through the winding canyon below, to the tall sandstone spire of Spider Rock. O’Keeffe’s choice to capture a sweeping, horizontal vista through three vertical photos is another characteristic of her photography.

A collection of black and white negatives of a Japanese pagoda taken from various angles. The negatives form a three by six grid.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Kiyomizu-dera Temple Pagoda
February 1959
Gelatin silver print, enlarged contact sheet
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe: Georgia O’Keeffe Papers. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

During her 1959 trip to Japan, O’Keeffe photographed the Kiyomizu-dera Temple Pagoda in Kyoto from top to bottom. If stacked, the horizontal images would create an elongated vertical rendering of the pagoda, an apt format for this remarkable building.

A painting of black and forest green abstract shapes against a light gray background.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
No. 24–Special/No. 24
1916–17
Oil paint on canvas
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe: Gift of the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, 2006.5.62. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

In this painting, O’Keeffe presents us with a view of the mesa seen from her window, with the black lines at the top and right suggesting the window frame. A compositional device used in many of her paintings and photographs, these architectural surrounds not only represent O’Keeffe’s window views but also playfully echo a picture frame that emphasizes the two-dimensional reality of painting.

A black and white photograph of a window with open curtains that looks into an adobe home’s living room. The reflection of a mesa can be seen in the window.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Reflection of Road in Window
Likely 1957
Gelatin silver print
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe: Museum Purchase, Georgia O’Keeffe Photographs, 2014.3.276. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

There are several photographs of the road and mesa taken from O’Keeffe’s bedroom. This image was taken from outside the house, looking toward the bedroom, with the landforms reflected in the window. O’Keeffe typically included window frames as elements in her work in order to flatten the perceived three-dimensionality of her compositions.

As I climbed and walked about in the ruin, I found a patio with a very pretty well house and bucket to draw up water. It was a good-sized patio with a long wall with a door on one side. That wall with a door in it was something I had to have.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Reframing Home

Explore one of the most photographed spaces in this exhibition: the courtyard in O’Keeffe’s home in Abiquiú, New Mexico. The artist bought her southwest residence in 1945. Initially attracted to the pueblo-style adobe home’s structure, O’Keeffe created many artworks that speak to her fascination with the intimate space of her hacienda.

Discover how a singular space can hold multiple views. Use the rectangles and squares below to frame the scene and create compositions, much like O’Keeffe did with her camera.

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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.