After working both as a portraitist
and a photographer of the environs of New York, the city in which she was born
and raised, Doris Ulmann turned to the rural regions of Kentucky, Tennessee,
and North Carolina for her inspiration. There she discovered a way of life she
wished to preserve photographically before it slipped away, with a special
emphasis directed toward the folk arts and crafts indigenous to the Appalachian
region. A former student of Clarence H. White, Ulmann approached photography with
rigorous integrity. She depicted men and women, black and white, with respect
for their talents and sympathy for their misfortunes. Her purpose was not to
effect social change nor even to evoke an emotional response but rather to
create a body of work which would act as a visual form of social memory.