Sketching with Light: O’Keeffe’s “Snaps”

Over the course of their friendship, Todd Webb helped Georgia O’Keeffe acquire two cameras: in the 1950s, a Leica, and in the 1960s, a Polaroid. She took great care in learning how to use them, studying the manuals, taking detailed notes, and photographing alongside Webb when he visited her in New Mexico. In 1959, Webb wrote to O’Keeffe:

I loved the morning we went out to photograph in the sand hills—and you told me about going out with Stieglitz at Lake George and keeping track of the focusing cloth, the bulb and other losable items. I made two photographs of you that morning that I like very much. I will send them sometime when I have the nerve.[1]

Webb often sent O’Keeffe his photos of her, New Mexico, and his world travels; he also took O’Keeffe’s film for processing, and returned O’Keeffe’s “snaps”—the term she used for the photos she shot. Webb later explained that O’Keeffe did not photograph often, but when she did, she used her cameras as a form of sketching. O’Keeffe wrote about the role her camera played in creating her painting Winter Road (1963):

One day, playing with a camera I tried to photograph the road and to get it all in I had to turn the camera at a very odd angle. My drawing—or painting—call it what you will—comes from that photograph.[2]

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum holds various notes, manuals, and ephemera relating to O’Keeffe’s interest in photography, as well as a treasure trove of photographs by O’Keeffe and Webb illustrating their friendship and shared interests.

This post was written by Elizabeth Ehrnst, Archivist and Digital Collections Librarian, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

[1] Webb, Todd. Letter to Georgia O’Keeffe. 6 August 1959. Todd Webb Archive. Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona.

[2] Bry, Doris, ed. Georgia O’Keeffe: Some Memories of Drawings. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1974.