Among her earliest photographs, Interior was likely made while
Doris Ulmann was a student at the Clarence H. White School of Modern
Photography in New York. She would later become known for her portraits of
craftsmen and musicians in Appalachia and of the Gullah people of coastal South
Carolina, the latter published in 1933 as Roll, Jordan Roll. Although
atypical for Ulmann in its subject, Interior nonetheless conveys a deep
respect for the materials and textures of real life and perfectly embodies the
transitional moment when forward-looking photographers moved from the
soft-focus of Pictorialism to more modernist, nearly abstract compositions.