Smithsonian American Art Museum Photography Collection Feature

Documentary photographer Andrea Modica captured this haunting image.

Andrea Modica explores a wide range of topics with her camera. Some of her documentary subjects have included a psychiatric hospital, a minor league baseball team, as well as a poverty stricken family with fourteen children.

Modica's photographs, while documentary in nature, often contain aesthetic elements that give them a dream-like quality. This aura stems from her compositional choices and from her photographic techniques.

Modica is known for her use of old-fashioned large-format view cameras with which she creates exquisite platinum prints. Making platinum prints is also a throwback to early photography techniques, but the delicate tonal palette that results allows a much more detailed translation of the photographer's vision.

Pictured: Andrea Modica, born 1960, Oneonta, New York, 1988, palladium print on paper, 8 7/8 x 11 3/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Consolidated Natural Gas Company Foundation.