#doris ulmann

"While less severe in its connotations of poverty and paternal discipline than another image by Doris Ulmann of a Georgia farmer with his daughters that Edward Steichen, curator of photographs at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, would select for his 1955 Family of Man exhibition, this portrait of a father and son is similar in its emphasis on the strong family bonds born of the necessity of work and the isolation of rural living. A second son, who for the most part is eliminated from this tightly cropped composition, is represented only by a small hand, seen grasping the pot of berries at left. The young father, a hard-working, seemingly self-sufficient type, symbolizes the tall, thin Anglo-Saxon mountaineer who would be idealized in American Scene painting and nationalistic literature during the period between the world wars. The theme of the legacy of generations, in terms of crafts and values as well as property and physical features, is also reflected in this image."