Photographs by Doris Ulmann, September 7-[October] 1930

Doris Mae Ulmann was born May 29, 1882 in New York City. From 1900 to 1903, Doris attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School teacher training course and obtained a teachers degree. She valued the individual, regardless of economic or ethnic background. She attended Columbia University as well.

In 1914 Ulmann studied photography with Clarence H. White at the Clarence White School of Photography at Columbia University, New York City, New York and in 1915 she was a member of the Pictorial Photographers of America. Ulmann was working as a professional photographer in New York City, New York in 1918, specializing in photographing medical subjects and the theater. She specialized in the pictorial photography style and was a member of the Pictorial Photographers of America. Ulmann married at age 32 to Dr. Charles H. Jaeger, a fellow Pictorialist photographer and surgeon at Columbia University Medical School.

Starting in the 1920s, Ulmann photographed many genre scenes, tableaux, and portraits, including prominent intellectuals, actors, artists, explorers, and writers which she published in art and literary periodicals such as PPA, Bookman, and Scribner's Magazine. She also published her photographs in magazines as part of the transition from magazines illustrated with drawings to those with photographs, and, in the 1930s, to picture magazines like Life (1936) and Look (1937). Her photographs helped change the way we perceive and therefore represent the people she photographed, from quaint, picturesque peasants to individuals with dignity and purpose in the modern world.

From 1918 until 1934 Ulmann surveyed the American East Coast, photographing hidden colonies of artisans and cultures. She traveled throughout the southern United States documenting the rural culture life of the Virginias, Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina. Her photographs of the mountain peoples of Appalachia in 1925 and the Gullahs of the Sea Island were well known. In 1929 she photographed plantation workers in South Carolina. While working near Asheville, North Carolina in August 1934, she collapsed and subsequently returned to New York. Ulmann died August 28, 1934.

Sources:
Brannan, Beverly W. “Doris Ulmann (1882-1934).” Women Photojournalists: Doris Ulmann - Biographical Essay(Prints and Photographs Reading Room, Library of Congress). Library of Congress, August 2010. https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/womphotoj/ulmannessay.html?loclr=blogfam.
Wikipedia contributors, ""Doris Ulmann,"" Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Doris_Ulmann&oldid=1082014262 (accessed April 15, 2022).