Jennifer Jackson
Assistant Editor
Approximately 25 students and faculty members joined visiting professor of photography, Stacey McCarroll Cutshaw who presented “Marketing the Family in the Mid-Twentieth Century: Photography of Nell Dorr” as part of the faculty lecture series Monday in the President’s Dining Room.
She explained Dorr’s photography and its role in the 20th century.
“I like the work as a historical portal to the way images are circulating,” McCarroll Cutshaw said.
“This representation of the circulation of the female nude in ways I think is surprising to us. I’m more fascinated with the ways she circulated the work, how it was received and how it challenges our assumptions about photography at the time.”
McCarroll Cutshaw shared images from Dorr’s published books such as “In a Blue Moon” (1939) and “Mother and Child” (1954).
“In a Blue Moon” features female children in the nude and close-up abstract images of flowers. This book portrays the blossoming of a girl into into womanhood.
“Her work operates at the boundary between popular practice and art photography practice so I like the way she negotiates that boundary,” McCarroll Cutshaw said.
In her second book, “Mother and Child,” Dorr focuses on a sensitive study of motherhood. She produced this compilation as a tribute after the death of one of her daughters.
“How an image is received is all about the context in which it’s framed and how it’s presented,” McCarroll Cutshaw said.
The use of child nudity in Dorr’s work was surprising to students.
“Nell Dorr was able to capture nudity in a way that seemed so pure and innocent,” Bree David, junior liberal studies major, said. “Looking at the photos, I didn’t feel uncomfortable at all and maybe that was because of the fact that the children were surrounded by nature and they weren’t posed so much, it was relaxed. There was nothing risqué about the images and the gray scale changed that as well.”
Dorr has a commitment to showing the beauty in authenticity.
“If the photos were in today’s time it would be more controversial because of the nudity of children,” Kasha Koeslag, junior psychology major, said. “I liked how she was all about motherhood, but she had a successful career which was uncommon for that time; she was opposing the stereotype.”
Dorr used the traditional chemical process to develop her photography.
“I resonated with the magic that goes on in the darkroom, the chemistry that brings together the chemical dimension and the aesthetic dimension of the image,” Jay Jones, professor of biology, said.
“I’m an old-time hand developer, you can increase the development speed in an area just by gently rubbing it, mass transfer is accelerated and you also slightly warm it so that area you are caressing becomes darker.”
“That kind of manipulation is like caressing the universe.”
Jennifer Jackson can be reached at jennifer.jackson2@laverne.edu.
