Georgia O'Keeffe at Ghost Ranch: A Photo-Essay - Hardcover

Loengard, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3823899651 ISBN 13: 9783823899655

Publisher: Te Neues Pub Group, 1999

Synopsis

The American artist Georgia O'Keeffe had been living alone on the Ghost Ranch in New Mexico for seventeen years when photographer John Loengard, on assignment for Life magazine, visited her there in 1966. Even in that vast, windswept landscape, O'Keeffe's was an imposing presence. Adamant about her privacy and about the parts of her life she consented to have photographed, O'Keeffe, then eighty years old, proved a challenging but rewarding subject.
Striking in their simplicity and bold composition, the fifty photographs in this classic volume - arranged in sequence from sunrise to sunset - record a day in the life not of a renowned painter, but of a woman living alone in a lonely setting. Yet the pictures offer a clear connection between the austere poetry of the landscape and O'Keeffe's own self-created outer and inner worlds, her artistic imagination being filtered by the bleached bones and infinite emptiness of the desert, which, as she said herself, "knows no kindness with all its beauty". Accompanied by some of O'Keeffe's reflections on life in the desert, and by the photographer's illuminating recollections of the three-day shoot, this volume, reprinted in an attractive format, is a stunning example of the important dynamic that exists between photographer and subject, and remains one of the most stirring photographic essays ever created of an American artist.

About this title

Review

The vast landscape of New Mexico won the heart of American artist Georgia O'Keeffe on her first visit there in 1917, and the open sky, parched earth, and bleached white bones she found there soon became the prominent subjects of her paintings. She granted John Loengard, a photographer for Life magazine, the rare opportunity to photograph her in her home at Ghost Ranch in 1966. Fifty of the black-and-white photographs he took that day fill this 79-page, small-format hardcover and form a classic record of a day in the life of an eminent yet elusive artist. Quotes by O'Keeffe about New Mexico and brief biographies of the painter and Loengard add extra dimension to the images. --A.C. Smith

About the Author

John Loengard, born in New York City in 1934, recieved his first assignment for Life magazine in 1956 and joined the magazine’s staff in 1961. His book Pictures under Discussion won the Ansel Adams Award in 1987.

Edition details

• Publisher: Te Neues Pub Group
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 3823899651
• ISBN 13: 9783823899655
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 80