The Minister at Ephrata, Pennsylvania

From the Getty Museum record

Doris Ulmann recorded this minister and his wife ([87.XM.89.64](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/62348/doris-ulmann-the-minister's-wife-ephrata-pennsylvania-american-1927/)) individually and together in a series of fifteen poses. These austere pictures are reminiscent of pendant portraits by fifteenth-century Netherlandish artists like Jan van Eyck or Rogier van der Weyden. The minister, probably the head of a Dunkard congregation, was featured in "Character Portraits by Doris Ulmann," a 1927 article authored by Hamlin Garland, a pioneer of the new naturalism in American literature. Nine of what Garland called Ulmann's "sympathetic records of American types" appeared in his piece in The Mentor, which described the minister as "well-read" and having "a keen mind" but being very skeptical of a stranger's interest in taking his picture. Ulmann was apparently convincing, because "when he realized that the photograph was not to be used for exploitation purposes he gave his consent in a charming manner." She then arranged him before three different backgrounds and directed him in a variety of poses, usually involving the small Bible he is shown holding in this plate. Adapted from Judith Keller. *Doris Ulmann*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996), 34. ©1996, J. Paul Getty Trust.