Apocalypse II

Jerry Norman Uelsmann, artist

1934–2022

Apocalypse II, 1967

Portfolio/Series title: Jerrry N. Uelsmann Portfolio

Where object was made: United States

Material/technique: gelatin silver print

Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 27 x 33.7 cm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 10 5/8 x 13 1/4 in
Mat Dimensions (Height x Width): 20 x 25 in

Credit line: Museum purchase

Accession number: 1972.0049

Not on display

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Images

Label texts

Spencer Museum of Art Highlights

Photographer Jerry Uelsmann is well-known for creating composite photographs using elaborate combinations of multiple negatives. In this photograph, Uelsmann represents an unreal scene in which silhouetted figures stand on a shore and gaze out at a symmetrical tree that rises out of the white water. By relying on the perception that photographs depict an unmediated version of reality, Uelsmann’s seamless composite photograph plays with the viewer’s expectations of landscape photography.

Google Art Project

Under Construction

Jerry Uelsmann plays with the idea of illusion in his photograph of people gazing into a gentle Florida seascape and a bilaterally symmetrical tree, which echoes the mushroom cloud from an atomic explosion. This manipulated image hints at an apocalyptic future as well as the turbulence of the 1960s. Although Uelsmann alludes to negative events during this time period, the conflation of a tree with an atomic bomb invites the viewer to experience hope in the midst of chaos.

Uelsmann is an American photographer who often combines images of human figures and landscapes in his works to produce dream-like results. The artist experiments in the darkroom to compose his complex, multilayered negatives in black and white.

Exhibition Label:
"Trees & Other Ramifications: Branches in Nature & Culture," Mar-2009, Steve Goddard
Uelsmann plays with the perceived bilateral symmetry of trees in this manipulated photograph.

Exhibition Label:
“Make a Mark: Art of the 1960s,” Mar-2008, Lara Kuykendall
Take an object.
Do something to it.
Do something else to it.

Take a canvas.
Put a mark on it.
Put another mark on it.
Jasper Johns.
“Sketchbook Notes,” 1965

In the 1960s artists from the United States and beyond strove to “make a mark” on the art world and the culture at large by exploring the nature of creativity. Each of the three themes in this exhibition, color + form, gesture + splatter, and layer upon layer, shows how vivid and dynamic the art of this decade was. Some artists used color and geometric shapes abstractly, often to foster unusual optical effects, whereas others employed the personal, autographic gesture of expressionism. Still other artists exploited various methods of layering to create new kinds of collage. By doing something to an object or putting marks on a surface, artists in the 1960s responded to the realms of art, politics, and popular culture. The objects and images they made defined the visual culture of their generation.