Two Men at Work

This picture probably dates from the second decade of this century, when Doris Ulmann was experimenting a great deal with the painterly processes of gum bichromate and bromoil printing and making numerous studies of dockworkers, fishermen, and farmers in New England. The composition, of two men sharpening mowing equipment, gives prominence to the tools, using them to anchor the image and, at the same time, suggest movement. The foreground arrangement of these functional geometric forms also provides important balance for the rectangles of subtle shadows in the background. In the printing of this platinum image, the figure of the older worker, whose face is marked by the effects of age, has been highlighted, while his younger companion has been made to recede into the deep grays of the medium. Judith Keller. *Doris Ulmann*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996), 16. ©1996, J. Paul Getty Trust.