Coyotes 1945

Curator: Frederick Sommer’s "Coyotes," a gelatin silver print dating to 1945, certainly presents us with a stark vision. My immediate response is one of unease, a visceral sense of decay. The monochrome palette amplifies the starkness, forcing us to confront the subject head-on. Editor: Stark indeed. As an image circulated and received in the mid-1940s, during and just after a period of intense global conflict, one has to ask what impact this picture had. Was Sommer intentionally connecting ideas of war, death, and the abject with an animal already heavily burdened with symbolism? Curator: Precisely. The coyote itself is a powerful symbol, especially in Southwestern traditions. It is often a trickster, a survivor, an ambiguous figure straddling the line between the sacred and profane. Here, stripped of its vitality, the animal loses much of its symbolic ambivalence. These are not living tricksters; they’re carcasses. What endures, if anything? Editor: I wonder, too, about the material qualities. The high contrast characteristic of gelatin silver prints would have emphasized the sharp details—the bones, the fur, the texture of the earth. Was there perhaps an intent to disrupt or challenge idealized notions of the landscape or animal life? The way the photograph so closely documents this speaks to documentary practices and an interest in capturing reality in a changing, post-war society. Curator: Absolutely. The photograph’s detail almost compels the viewer to confront their own mortality. We read narratives of death and transience but rendered in exquisite clarity. The gelatin silver intensifies the visual signifiers. Editor: This is Sommer at his best: unsettling, forcing us to grapple with uncomfortable truths. A powerful statement about our place in a world marked by conflict. Curator: It’s the symbolism of loss rendered tangible and confronting our deepest understanding of nature's rhythms of destruction and regeneration. Food for somber consideration.