A Study of Hands (John Jacob Niles Unlocking the Door)
about 1932–1934
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions
- 20.3 × 15.3 cm
- Status
- In Museum Collection
- Collect24 Art ID
- C24-702318
The posthumous proof-print albums housed at the University of Oregon contain a dozen or so pictures of John Jacob (“Jack”) Niles’s (1892-1980) hands that are part of a private, whimsical, seemingly affectionate series that the two collaborators (Niles and Doris Ulmann) probably carried out in Ulmann's New York apartment. Among the work of her contemporaries, August Sander's studies of craftsmen's hands ([84.XM.152.134](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/35888/august-sander-the-hands-of-the-painter-jankel-adler-die-hande-des-malers-jankel-adler-german-negative-1924-print-about-1953/)) and Lotte Jacobi's compositions concentrating on the hands of her sometimes illustrious sitters might be noted for comparison ([85.XP.139](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/33625/lotte-jacobi-hands-of-general-music-director-erich-kleiber-american-about-1933-1935/)), but Alfred Stieglitz's images of Georgia O'Keeffe's hands posed on the chrome rim of her new automobile or over her bare breasts ([91.XM.63.11.1](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/220401/alfred-stieglitz-georgia-o'keeffe-a-portrait-american-1933/) and [91.XM.63.7](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects…
Provenance
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Registry history
- about 1932–1934 — Recorded in the collection of J. Paul Getty Museum — photographs
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