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Telephone

1922
Not on view
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.
A well-paid advertising photographer working in New York in the 1930s, Paul Outerbridge Jr. was trained as a painter and set designer. Highly influenced by Cubism, he was a devoted advocate of the platinum-print process, which he used to create nearly abstract still lifes of commonplace subjects such as cracker boxes, wine glasses, and men’s collars. With their extended midtones and velvety blacks, platinum papers were relatively expensive and primarily used by fine-art photographers like Paul Strand, Edward Steichen, and Alfred　Stieglitz. This modernist study of a Western Electric "candlestick" telephone attests to Outerbridge’s talent for transforming banal, utilitarian objects into small, but powerful sculptures with formal rigor and startling beauty.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Telephone
  • Artist: Paul Outerbridge Jr. (American, New York 1896–1959 Laguna Beach, California)
  • Date: 1922
  • Medium: Platinum print
  • Dimensions: Image: 4 1/2 × 3 3/8 in. (11.4 × 8.5 cm)
    Framed: 16 × 13 1/4 in. (40.6 × 33.7 cm)
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Promised Gift of Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs