A photographer who worked in advertising as well as in
fine art, Paul Outerbridge was a master of the complex “carbro” color process
that was the favored technique in the 1930s and 1940s for color images printed
in magazines. As
he saw the major difference between “artistic” monochrome and “commercial”
color photography, “in black and white you suggest; in color you state.” Yet
Outerbridge believed that the same sharp and vivid hues that attracted the
public in advertising could be just as appealing in traditional art genres such
as portraiture, still lifes, or nude studies. Here, he assembled pieces of Americana—colonial-era
wooden furniture, a capped whirligig, metallic sailboat, and various tchotchkes.
Although they all bear tags as if for sale, in truth the print advertises Outerbridge’s
expert technique rather than the items themselves.