Valise d'Adam

Title (Dublin Core): Valise d'Adam
Type (Dublin Core): Photograph
Medium (Dublin Core): gelatin silver prints
Description (Dublin Core): Against a backdrop of rusting metal, Frederick Sommer arranged a grouping of found objects. A clipboard clamp represents a head and shoulders while dirty, cracking doll's arms and legs provide more literal context, defining the object as a human body. Within that fragmented body, Sommer places a complete doll with its head pointed downward, as if ready to be born.

The photograph's French title, Valise d'Adam, or as Sommer translated it, Adam's Traveling Case, is a sly reference to the idea that man travels through woman into the world, and perhaps, woman even carries man through life.
has dimension (CIDOC CRM Ontology): 9 3/8 × 7 3/8" (23.6 × 18.8 cm)
Creator (Dublin Core): Frederick Sommer
Date (Dublin Core): 1949
Coverage (Dublin Core): Surrealist
Subject (Dublin Core): porcelain dolls
Provenance (Dublin Core): Gift of the artist
References (Dublin Core): https://www.moma.org/collection/works/46974; https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/107Q1R