SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO.- An exhibition that draws on Todd Webb’s 30-year photographic record of Georgia O’Keeffe’s life in New Mexico is on view at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Georgia O’Keeffe: The Artist’s Landscape presents an intimate view of one artist’s life as seen through the eyes of another. In the mid-1940s, acclaimed photographer Webb began a friendship with O’Keeffe and her husband, Alfred Stieglitz. He began visiting O’Keeffe during his frequent trips to New Mexico from the 1950s through the early 1980s. The exhibition’s 38 photographs, taken in that time, present the artist in the environment that influenced her art for more than 60 years.

Because Webb often visited O’Keeffe at her house in Abiquiu, these photographs portray its architecture and that of nearby buildings, interiors, and the artifacts that drew her eye: patios, doors, and walls. These are the same forms that O’Keeffe depicted in her paintings. O’Keeffe photographed her surroundings as well, and one of Webb’s images is of her making a photo of the Chama Valley in 1961. Other portraits capture the artist walking across the New Mexico terrain, intensely observing her natural surroundings and their breathtaking views.

One of the exhibition’s best-known works is O’Keeffe On the Portal, Ghost Ranch, a photograph made by Webb in 1959 that shows a bone fragment on the floor, a wooden chair, and a skull hanging on the wall— objects that appear in O’Keeffe’s paintings. In Prepared Canvas, Abiquiu Studio, we see a 1963 photograph of a finished painting alongside the willowy branch that inspired it.

George King, director of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, said, “Photography has always played an important role in O’Keeffe’s history and Mr. Webb’s photographs are wonderful images of her and her environment in New Mexico.”

“We are very pleased to exhibit these wonderful photographs,” said Barbara Buhler Lynes, curator of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

A native of Detroit, Webb studied under Ansel Adams before serving as a photographer for the U.S. Navy, the Standard Oil Company, and the United Nations. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955 and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1978. His photographs are included in some of the finest museum collections in the country, including those of the Museum of Modern Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Art Institute of Chicago; the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; and the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Webb spent summers in New Mexico from 1957 through 1960, and was persuaded by O’Keeffe to move to Santa Fe with his wife in 1961. The Webbs lived there for the remainder of the 1960s. Webb died in 2000.

Georgia O’Keeffe: The Artist’s Landscape was curated by Jack Woody and is organized and circulated by Curatorial Assistance, Inc., Los Angeles. It will be on view at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum through September 21, 2002.