[Maum Duck, South Carolina]

This woman, who appears to be dressed for church, has been variously identified as a midwife and a voodoo doctor. Another even more frontal portrait by Doris Ulmann of her smiling is used as an illustration in a chapter of Julia Peterkin’s 1933 book Roll, Jordan, Roll (https://primo.getty.edu), which contains a detailed listing of superstitions and incantations that Peterkin thought were still practiced by the African American population of Lang Syne, her South Carolina plantation. Just as Ulmann’s assistant John Jacob (“Jack”) Niles (1892-1980) collected centuries-old Southern folk songs, Peterkin (1880-1961) gathered the ancient beliefs of medicine and magic that surrounded her. In the text that Maum Duck illustrates, conjuring is described as follows: "'Good' conjurers deal in white magic and make charms to cure sickness and heartaches. . . . Reliable love charms are made with a strand of hair, a bit of skin from a heel, a tiny paring of toe nail or finger nail, and no living man can resist the love-spell cast upon him if the lady who wants him will wear a bit of his shirt tail tied to a string around her waist." (For another Ulmann work that was used as an illustration for Roll, Jordan, Roll, see 87.XM.89.25 and 87.XM.89.66).

Adapted from Judith Keller. Doris Ulmann, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996), 54. ©1996, J. Paul Getty Trust.