Katherine in the playhouse, Monroe, Louisiana

Artist Margaret Sartor American, born 1959

Date1989; printed 2005

MediumPigmented inkjet print

Dimensionsimage: 22 × 21 13/16 in. (55.9 × 55.4 cm)
paper: 24 × 29 3/8 in. (61 × 74.6 cm)
frame: 30 1/4 × 30 1/4 × 1 1/2 in. (76.8 × 76.8 × 3.8 cm)

ClassificationsPhotography

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the William R. Roberson Jr. and Frances M. Roberson Endowed Fund for North Carolina Art

Object number2005.17.2

On View

Not on view

Label TextMargaret Sartor has returned repeatedly to her childhood home in Louisiana, to photograph the people and places she grew up with and still feels closely connected to.
As Sartor has written in reference to her work:

Like many southerners, I was brought up with the belief that moving forward in life requires looking back¬—back toward home, that laser point on the horizon by which one learns to clarify the angles and shapes of any new experience. My father called it Proper Perspective.

As a photographer, I have found my way home by returning to the backyards and cotton fields of my childhood, by looking hard at the faces and landscape I’ve known and watched since I can remember. More often than not, however, I have found that making these pictures brings me face-to-face with what I most want to ignore: human vulnerability. Perhaps that’s why I began this series? To face the fact that even the deepest emotional connections are fragile, that though we may yearn for stability, we still live in a world that none of us can predict.

[L. Dougherty, 2007]
ProvenanceCreated Monroe, LA, 1989, printed 2005; collection of the artist; sold to NCMA, 2005.
Published ReferencesStacy Chandler, "Women on women: Exhibit tells their stories," Raleigh: The News and Observer (June 19, 2011), illus. (b-w) 4D.
Exhibition HistoryRaleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "Contemporary NC Photography from the Museum's Collection," (part 1) September 3-November 5, 2006.

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "Mirror Image: Women Portraying Women," May 1-November 27, 2011.

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, “The Energy of Youth: Depicting Childhood in the NCMA’s Photography Collection,” September 26, 2015–April 3, 2016.

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, “To Be Young: Coming of Age in the Contemporary” [Part 1], April 3, 2021–September 26, 2021. Object Rights Statement

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