Morris spent his childhood in Nebraska, and this photographs focus on a small farmhouse, a common local structure, suggests that he prized the visible traces of rural life in that landscape. Framed by vast planes of snow and sky, the structure sits alone. Despite the stillness of the scene, Morris embraced a connection to humanity: "It is my feeling that the absence of people in these photographs enhances their presence in the objects—the structures, the artifacts, even the landscape suggests its appropriate inhabitant," the artist wrote in 1975. "This nonpersonal but commonly shared impression, giving rise to our larger sense of shared experience, is what I find and value in these salvaged fragments of the American past."
Gallery label from American Modern: Hopper to O'Keeffe, August 17, 2013–January 26, 2014.
