Getty Museum
Arizona Landscape
Creator
Frederick SommerAmerican Photographer · 1905–1999
All works by this person →The son of a city planner, Frederick Sommer was trained as an architect in Brazil. He began to exhibit his drawings in Brazil while still a teenager. His work was so accomplished that he was accepted to the architecture department at Cornell University, though he had not received an undergraduate degree and did not yet speak English. Sommer purchased his first camera around 1931 while he was in Sw
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- 1945
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
*For years I looked at the Arizona landscape and it seemed almost a hopeless task. What was the difference between the top of the picture and the bottom of it? It was all the same. These were enormous areas, but still there were details. There's nothing happening in the sky and I decided, 'No skies for me.' Finally there was no foreground, there was no middle distance, there was nothing. And, there was very little distinction between the plants and the rocks. Even the rocks were struggling.* Thus Frederick Sommer described his initial difficulties in photographing the barren Arizona landscape. Cacti rise up intermittently from the arid ground like ritual markers, as Sommer's unusual perspective and meticulous framing redefine this horizonless desert landscape, a terrain at once both ancient and contemporary.
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