Photo Underwater
William Wegman
American, born 1943
1971
A gelatin silver print photograph in which Wegman lets a stream of real water strike a printed portrait, testing the boundary between a photographed image and its physical presence.
You are arrested by the tight, high-contrast close-up of a tilted jaw and throat as a narrow column of water appears to enter the subject’s open mouth, an uncanny fusion of flat image and moving liquid.
By staging physical interventions on the print, Wegman’s piece marks a shift in 1970s photography toward conceptual, performative approaches that treat photographs as objects as well as pictures.
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
10 11/16 × 10 3/8" (27.1 × 26.3 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of the Peter Norton Family Foundation
Accession
223.1994
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
