Getty Museum
Jason Reed, North Georgia Chairmaker
Creator
Doris UlmannAmerican Photographer · 1882–1934
All works by this person →A New Yorker by birth, Doris Ulmann preserved the rural cultures of the southeastern United States through her photographs. She worked particularly in the "Southern Highlands" of the Appalachian Mountains, creating portraits of the residents. In 1933, she contributed photographs to *Roll, Jordan, Roll*, a book by novelist Julia Peterkin about the vanishing black culture, known as Gullah, of the So
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- about 1933–1934
- Medium
- Platinum print
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
- Object ID
- fae6f388-6811-41d4-9688-04d11eca6105
In his 1937 *Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands* Allen Eaton (1878-1962) states that "chairmaking is rarely a full-time job, most who carry it on being farmers who fill in between the seasons of outdoor work" ([https://primo.getty.edu](https://primo.getty.edu/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=GETTY_ALMA21140498420001551&context=L&vid=GRI&lang=en_US&search_scope=COMBINED&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=all_gri&query=any,contains,allen%20eaton&offset=0)). Jason Reed is probably one of the craftsmen-farmers Eaton sent Doris Ulmann and her assistant John Jacob (“Jack”) Niles (1892-1980) to photograph. She exposed some fourteen negatives of Reed, recording him at work making furniture with his simple wooden tools, enjoying his grandchildren, and, here, resting with his cane, perhaps seated on a product of his own handiwork. Ulmann seems to have been as fascinated by the aging forms of her subjects as by their faces; her own partial lameness after a 1926 accident no doubt encouraged this empathy with the disabled and infirm. It also increased the necessity of a strong assistant like Niles, who, coincidentally, had a slight limp himself due to wounds suffered in World War I. Judith Keller. *Doris Ulmann*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996), 78. ©1996, J. Paul Getty Trust.
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