Lot 386
Clarence John Laughlin (American/Louisiana, 1905-1985), 'Worship of Black', silver gelatin print, negative date June 28, 1941, print c. 1946-1950s, 40 in. x 30 in., unframed, dry mounted. Provenance: Collection of Laughlin Family, Waveland, Mississippi, to the present owner. Note: During World War II, Clarence John Laughlin worked as a photographer, first for the U.S. Signal Corps and later for the Office of Strategic Services. With access to the military's photography equipment for oversized aerial photographs, Laughlin experimented with his art photographs on oversized paper in 1944 and 1945. After his return to New Orleans in 1946, he occasionally produced large-scale photographs. A selection of his oversized photographs of Louisiana plantations was displayed at Godchaux's Department Store on Canal Street. Today those photographs are in the collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art. 'Worship of Black', which features Laughlin's recurring motifs of a veiled female figure and decaying architecture, is part of his series 'Poems of the Interior World'. Laughlin wrote of this series, begun as war loomed in 1939, as his 'most original and difficult project ' in which he attempted to symbolically express the fear and confusion of modern life. 'Worship of Black' uses the same ruined mantelpiece and model, Beatrice Prendergast, as 'The Enigma of Transition' and 'The Unborn'; the latter two are published in Visionary Photographer as plates 46 and 47.
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