Ruth Page Performing with Masks

Doris Ulmann, about 1920–1930

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Artist: Doris Ulmann (American, 1882–1934)
Medium: Platinum print
Size: Image: 20.8 × 15.6 cm (8 3/16 × 6 1/8 in.)
Culture: American
Museum: J. Paul Getty Museum
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

An upper-class New Yorker whose father was an avid amateur pianist, Doris Ulmann frequently attended theater, music, and dance productions in the city. She occasionally asked individual performers to pose for her; sometimes she would photograph the entire company on stage. Dancers, including Martha Graham, Anna Pavlova, and Ruth St. Denis, were among the artists she admired and chose to portray, usually in costume, but not always assuming a position from a recent composition (see also: 87.XM.89.58). Besides these legendary names, Ulmann was also attentive to other important contemporary innovators in modern dance and ballet, like Michio Ito and Ruth Page.

Page (1899-1991), who made her professional debut about 1918 with Pavlova's corps and later formed her own ballet troupe, is identified as the woman behind the mask in this unusually whimsical Ulmann work. It may be that these masks and the apparent Spanish mantilla Page is wearing were part of the dancer's collection of artifacts brought back from many touring engagements. Ulmann also photographed her in costume for the stage piece Tropic, however, which Page’s biographer describes as “dealing with equatorial decadence.” The masks Page is holding seem to be in the same Polynesian vein as the ones Nicolas Remisoff designed for her to wear, with little more than tie-dyed scarves, when she performed that provocative dance.

The vertical streaking on this print resulted from an uneven application of the final wax or varnish coating that Ulmann favored for finishing her platinum work.

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