Untitled

Maker Shigemi Uyeda (American, 1902 - 1980)

Additional Title(s)

ClassificationsPHOTOGRAPHS

Date1920-1929

Mediumsilver print

Dimensions4 1/2 x 3 5/8 in. (11.4 x 9.2 cm.)

SignedSigned on verso in graphite: Shigemi M. Uyeda

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

Label TextPhotographer Shigemi Uyeda (1902-1980) immigrated to the United States at age fifteen, working in farming in the Central Valley, and later, in Lancaster. He was part of the artistic community of Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo in the 1920s and 30s.

This picture is small in size because it is a contact print—made by exposing the negative directly onto photographic paper, without using an enlarger. Uyeda stored his contact prints in albums that mixed his art photography with more intimate family snapshots. This scene is filled with mystery and tension, as a trench coat-clad figure traverses a steep dam. The plant in the foreground draws attention to the viewer’s own precarious vantage point.

Status

Not on view

Object number86.29.2