Washington, D.C., 1975

Kenneth Josephson, Washington, D.C., 1975, 1975, gelatin silver print, image: 8 x 12 in. (20.2 x 30.6 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Endowment for the Arts, 1983.63.828, © 1975, Kenneth Josephson

Artwork Details

Title: Washington, D.C., 1975
Artist: Kenneth Josephson
Date: 1975
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: image: 8 x 12 in. (20.2 x 30.6 cm.)
Copyright: © 1975, Kenneth Josephson
Credit Line: Transfer from the National Endowment for the Arts
Mediums Description: gelatin silver print
Classifications: Photography
Photoprint
Subjects: Landscape — park
Landscape — water
Figure — fragment — arm
Cityscape — District of Columbia — Washington
Monument — obelisk — Washington Monument
Object Number: 1983.63.828
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1983.63.828

Artwork Description

In the 1960s and 1970s, Kenneth Josephson, a graduate of the Institute of Design and a student of Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind, began making works that focused on the act of picture making and offered playful commentary on photographic truth and illusion. He often actively intervened in the picture space by inserting objects or other photographs in front of the lens. In Washington, D.C., 1975 from his Archaeological Series, Josephson used a six-inch woodworker’s contour gauge to represent the shape of the Washington Monument. Since the monument at the other end of the reflecting pool is considerably beyond the measuring instrument’s reach, we understand that the monument’s image has been replicated in miniature. The joke is more than a one-liner, since the picture is also a metaphor for the idea that a photograph is a one-to-one reproduction of the world itself, only in smaller scale.

A Democracy of Images: Photographs from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2013