[Grace Combs, Hindman, Kentucky]

Doris Ulmann, about 1928–1934

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Artist: Doris Ulmann (American, 1882–1934)
Medium: Platinum print
Size: Image: 20.2 × 14.9 cm (7 15/16 × 5 7/8 in.)
Culture: American
Museum: J. Paul Getty Museum
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

"They all want to go and dress up," Doris Ulmann said of the subjects she preferred to photograph in their day-to-day clothing and habitat. Grace Combs appears to be one of those sitters who wanted to be shown in stylish pose and costume, but she may also have been one of a number of Hindman Settlement School students Ulmann chose to portray for their youthful attractiveness and desire to be as current as their meager resources would allow.

The University of Oregon proof-print albums reveal that at this session Ulmann made quite a few pictures of Combs, with and without her gloves and hat, seated, and in close up, all capturing her naturally seductive gaze. Combs was no doubt related to the first graduate of Hindman, Josiah H. Combs, who, in the mid-1920s, completed a dissertation for the Sorbonne on folk songs of the middle United States.

Text: J. Paul Getty Trust, CC BY 4.0.