Uncle Harry Entering Barn (Primary Title)
Wright Morris, American, 1910-1998 (Artist)
A pioneer author and photographer, Wright Morris published numerous novels that he illustrated with photographs of people and sites familiar to him. Uncle Harry Entering Barn appeared as the final image in Morris’s 1947 Home Place, a fictionalized account of his return to the Nebraska farm of his childhood. The lyricism of Morris’s faceless portrait of his uncle relies on the complete exposure of the side of the barn to capture the detail of its rough wood surface and the matted straw on the ground. The highly textured, irregular wall reveals the structure’s age and weariness, as the rumpled and elderly Uncle Harry steps over the threshold of the dark doorway.
Signed in graphite on verso: "Wright Morris".
Floyd D. and Anne C. Gottwald Fund
The Likeness of Labor, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, October 17, 2015 - April 10, 2016
Collection Center for Creative Photography
© 2003 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents
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