Little Good Harbor, Maine

Artist Fred Holland Day (American, 1864–1933)

Date1905–1912

Mediumcyanotype

Dimensionsimage: 8.9 × 11.9 cm (3 1/2 × 4 11/16 in.)
sheet: 8.9 × 12.3 cm (3 1/2 × 4 13/16 in.)

ClassificationsPhotographs

Credit LineSarah C. Garver Fund

Object number2015.42

Descriptionincludes retouches, perhaps made by the hand of the artist
Label TextAmong the first American artists to promote photography as a fine art, Fred Holland Day’s photographs share the sensibility of the Pictorialist movement. Pictorialists envisioned photographs as more than a snapshot, instead manipulating color and composition to create emotionally-charged images. In Little Good Harbor, Maine, Day depicts the coastline of his summer retreat. He plays with camera focus and bold shades of blue to create a sense of submersion into the water of the harbor. The vague, blurry forms give the photograph a painterly quality. Hand-applied retouches in the foreground—likely made by the artist—offer some evidence that Day considered this cyanotype a finished work, not a proof for a later print.

On View

Not on view