Object Lesson: Alfred Stieglitz’s Hands Beside His Photograph by Dorothy Norman
Dorothy Norman was only twenty-two years old when she walked into the Intimate Gallery and met Alfred Stieglitz, then sixty-three. Although they were separated by more than forty years in age, and despite the fact that each was already married, their physical and emotional relationship quickly blossomed. So profound was their connection that Stieglitz… Read More
Object Lesson: Blaze Starr by Diane Arbus
It is often said that a portrait photograph represents some kind of exchange between the photographer and the subject, and that the resulting image, as the product of this exchange, has something from both of these figures in it. Such a description however, fails to account for the intervention of the camera—or at least the… Read More
Object Lesson: In Mondrian’s Studio by André Kertész
In only his second year in Paris, after moving there from Hungary, André Kertész received an invitation to visit Piet Mondrian’s apartment and studio. There, he was immediately immersed in an international and multidisciplinary arts community where he convened and conversed with artists, writers, and architects, many of whom, like him, were recent transplants from… Read More
Object Lesson: Photographers Tina Modotti and Lola Alvarez Bravo and Mexican Modernism
This week, as NOMA turns its focus towards themes of connection, we are thinking about how human relationships shape artists’ careers, and how we can use those connections to interpret different artworks. In Mexico City during the 1920s and ‘30s, art flourished and grew thanks to the creative, romantic, and political relationships between artists in… Read More
Object Lesson: Portrait of Estelle Musson Degas by Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas arrived in New Orleans in 1872 for an extended stay, two years after he had enlisted in the National Guard during the Franco-Prussian War, and two years before he would join a group of painters back in Paris for the first of what would become known as the Impressionist Exhibitions. It was a… Read More
Object Lesson: Cellblock 6, Ramsey Prison, Texas by Danny Lyon
Danny Lyon took his first photography gig when he joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), an organization of young activists that orchestrated sit-ins and carried on the Freedom Rides during the Civil Rights Movement. With leader James Forman and other photographers, Lyon helped make photography an important part of SNCC’s strategy by documenting the… Read More