Carl Kurtz
(Milwaukee, Wisconsin 1942-2015 Excelsior Springs, Missouri)

Lamp, 1975
Dye-transfer print (Kodak)

In his photographs of everyday objects, Carl Kurtz adventurously experimented with color and form. The Kodak dye-transfer process makes full color photographic prints on paper from dyed relief images, which allows for greater control over the range of color at every stage. In Lamp, Kurtz manipulated the process to produce a kaleidoscopic wash of colors over the image of a domestic space. Kurtz’s introspective subject matter and experimental techniques represent the shift away from the political activism of the 1960s in search of a new purpose for photography in the 1970s. Although color photography had been available since the nineteenth century, art photographers had long shunned it as a medium for advertisers and amateurs. In 1975, this photograph would have been a radical acquisition for an art museum’s collection.

-Sarah Kain, Class of 2020

Museum purchase with funds provided by Wellesley College Friends of Art and the National Endowment for the Arts 1975.74