Cherokee Woman, North Carolina

The provenance of this photograph suggests that it may have been part of Doris Ulmann's show at Alma Reed's Delphic Studios in 1929. An article in the February 1930 issue of Theatre Arts Monthly, essentially a review of the show, is illustrated with eight photographs, including a portrait of an elderly Catawba Indian. The Theatre Arts critic praises Ulmann's work as a reminder of "the richness and depth and variety of dramatic treasure to be found in the mountains and valleys of country districts."

Ulmann worked with the Catawba tribe at their community near Rock Hill, South Carolina, and with the Cherokees on a reservation in western North Carolina, perhaps in the company of her friend the South Carolina writer Julia Peterkin (1880-1961). This occurred years before she made pictures for Allen Eaton's Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands (1937) (https://primo.getty.edu). Like Eaton (1878-1962), Ulmann was also interested in the craft traditions of these Native Americans. In what would seem to be a straightforward ethnographic record of this tribe's simple gray pottery, she skillfully gives as much attention to the individual as to the artifact. In Handicrafts, Eaton explains the craft process, relating that the Cherokees would gather clay from their reservation, shape it into forms by hand, and then "dry them in sun and wind, and harden them in the ovens and fireboxes of their cookstoves, where the gray clay is often smoked brown or burnt black from contact with blazing wood."

Adapted from Judith Keller. Doris Ulmann, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996), 50. ©1996, J. Paul Getty Trust.