Gael and Rachel
Artist
Judy Dater
(American, born 1941)
Date1971
Mediumgelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 11 3/4 × 9 in. (29.8 × 22.9 cm)
Support: 20 × 16 in. (50.8 × 40.6 cm)
Mat: 24 × 20 in. (61 × 50.8 cm)
Support: 20 × 16 in. (50.8 × 40.6 cm)
Mat: 24 × 20 in. (61 × 50.8 cm)
ClassificationsPhotograph
Credit LineJane Reese Williams Collection, Gift of Cindy Ewing, 2012
Object number2012.16.3
DescriptionWoman in dark hat and knitted shawl standing next to a tree or heavy branches of vine, holding the face of a freckled child with round eyeglasses her hands.eMuseum Notes
Always interested in the stories the human face can tell (and conceal), Dater’s portraits are often personal as well as theatrical. The woman and girl in this picture, whose expressions don’t reveal much, were probably friends or neighbors of the artist. Dater poses them in front of a muscular tangle of tree branches that nearly overwhelms the picture and adds a note of tension and darkness. The child’s disembodied head -- swathed in fabric and cradled in the hands of the woman beside her – adds another unsettling and mysterious element to this double portrait.
On View
Not on view
Gay Block
1988 (printed 2001)
