Ondine 1950

Frederick Sommer made this gelatin silver print, called "Ondine," sometime in the middle of the last century. It’s like he assembled this little stage, arranging objects, and then photographed them. The tonality is so subtle, a world of greys, and the texture feels almost crusty. Look at the ‘figure,’ an arm and a leg jointed together, with a strange, stippled surface, like goosebumps. It’s lying on a weathered, grainy plane of wood. It’s hard to tell what’s going on. Is it a discarded doll part? Some kind of mutant creature? The light is flat, which flattens the image, making it even more mysterious. The hand is reaching, but to what end? Sommer's work reminds me of some of the surrealist photography of the time, like Man Ray, who also liked to play with found objects and unexpected juxtapositions. But, this feels different somehow, more internal, like a coded message from a dream.