Standing Female Graduate in a Mortarboard and Gown

c. 1930s

Mike Disfarmer

(American, 1884–1959)

Image: 12.6 x 7.8 cm (4 15/16 x 3 1/16 in.); Paper: 13.7 x 8.8 cm (5 3/8 x 3 7/16 in.); Mounted: 27.7 x 21.4 cm (10 7/8 x 8 7/16 in.)

Gift of George Stephanopoulos 2013.231

Location: not on view

This artwork is known to be under copyright.

Description

Disfarmer may not have considered himself an artist, but the art world quickly awarded him that status when his images were published to great acclaim in the 1970s. From 1915 to the 1950s, he operated a portrait studio in the farming community of Heber Springs, Arkansas. By the 1930s, Disfarmer had departed from commercial portrait conventions for a minimalist aesthetic. He set subjects against one of two plain backdrops, one light with taped stripes and the other plain and dark. Instead of putting his subjects at ease, he was silent and sometimes photographed from behind a wall, waiting until they became themselves. His portraits reveal not just individuals but the social reality of life in small town America through times of war, feast, famine, the Depression, and war again.