Construction Worker on a Cigarette Break

This image of a black construction worker shows that Doris Ulmann's passionate interest in personality and physiognomy was not restricted to one race. In the 1920s she photographed prominent members of the Harlem Renaissance posing formally in her apartment or on stage in dramas about black culture. Around 1930, after making the acquaintance of South Carolina writer Julia Peterkin (1880-1961), Ulmann began to create hundreds of portraits of African Americans living in Southern cities like New Orleans and Mobile and on plantations and in fishing villages in Peterkin's native state.

The mount for this picture is signed "Doris U. Jaeger" (her married name) and is dated 1917. Evidence of handwork on the print, mostly to enhance the outlines of the circular forms, suggests that Ulmann was not entirely happy with the results produced by her soft-focus lens. While she continued to use this type of lens, she would employ it less and less to achieve the painterly effects of Pictorialism.

Judith Keller. Doris Ulmann, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996), 20. ©1996, J. Paul Getty Trust.